Successful precision food and nutrition approaches also need to establish computational frameworks to integrate these biomarkers with disease-specific outcomes. And ultimately, development of technology to support translation and bring health and nutrition care to the consumers is essential. CPNH will bring together expertise in nutrition, health, technology, and artificial intelligence under one umbrella to place DNS, CHE, and Cornell at the forefront of precision nutrition with a focus on bringing these advancements to individuals and the communities in the US and abroad.

Nutrition and health research is transitioning from population-based one-size-fits all approaches to understanding individual-level requirements for optimal health. The CPNH is aligned with the NIH Nutrition for Precision Health Initiative, which seeks to develop research to support tailored individual-level dietary approaches to prevent and/or treat disease. Within 10 to 20 years NIH is predicting the availability of individual-level data to develop evidence-based dietary advice to optimize nutrition and health outcomes. The challenge, which the Center will be ready to address, is to be positioned to translate the research evidence to meet these anticipated changes. This will include novel approaches that rely on wearables and sensing, technology and artificial intelligence.

The Center is also home to the first NIH training grant focused on artificial intelligence - a T32 on AI and precision nutrition. More details are here.

Cornell NutriPhone as an Example

The Cornell NutriPhone has resulted through a collaboration between scientists and engineers in Nutritional Sciences and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. When we began this partnership, our initial targets were to develop diagnostic tools that were affordable and accessible for populations in both resource-limited and resource-rich settings. From a technical standpoint, we also decided to focus on adapting conventional laboratory assays and gold standard methods rather than focusing on proxy biomarkers that are widely used in most field-based rapid diagnostic tests. We now have several issued patents for our technology and prototypes for low-cost accurate quantitative determination of several micronutrients including vitamins D and B12 concentrations from a drop of blood at the point-of-care. 

In recent work, we have started examining other matrices such as saliva as well as food to measure micronutrient status. We received a $100K prize in 2020 from the National Institutes of Health for our concept of non-invasive rapid diagnostics for assessment of iron status and inflammation from a drop of saliva.