Research Program. Precision Nutrition and Obesity

Director: Prof. José María Ordovás Muñoz

Objectives:  diet and exercise play an important role in the development and treatment of obesity and its comorbidities; however, it is well known that there is a dramatic inter-individual variability in the response to any therapeutic diet or physical regime aimed to prevent obesity and/or return to a healthy body weight.

In order to understand an individual’s susceptibility to becoming obese and their responsiveness to weight loss interventions we need to generate new knowledge at the molecular level using the tools provided by genetics and epigenetics as well as other omics, such as metabolomics. Most important in the current obesity epidemics is the fact that obesity begins early in life; therefore is of paramount importance that we understand the neurobiological factors that drive childhood obesity in order to decrease the current rates both at early ages as in the aging population.

It is precisely the later group that is being most seriously affected by the comorbidities of obesity (i.e., diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer); therefore, until such time that the developments of Precision Nutrition, in particular, and precision medicine in general, provide the means to prevent those diseases we need to develop better measures to improve the quality of life of those already in the elderly category and this can be done with the information provided by longitudinal cohorts designed to provide solid information about the current risk factors and facilitate the pathway to a healthy aging.

José María Ordovás Muñoz

Director of the Precision Nutrition and Obesity Program and Group leader of the Nutritional Genomics and Epigenomics Group

José M. Ordovás, PhD, is Professor of Nutrition and Genetics and a Senior Scientist at the USDA-HNRCA at Tufts in Boston, and Director of the Nutrition and Genomics Laboratory. Dr. Ordovás graduated from the University of Zaragoza and did postdoctoral work at the MIT, Harvard and Tufts. He has published over 700 scientific articles in peer review journals (h-index 92) and written numerous reviews and books.

In this regard, he is considered one of the most distinguished world experts in gene-diet interactions related to cardiovascular traits. Throughout his career, Dr. Ordovás has received multiple honors for his scientific achievements. He has been awarded an honorary degree in Medicine from the University of Córdoba in Spain and he is Member of the Royal Academies of Sciences, Medicine, Nutrition and Pharmacy. 

Email: jose.ordovas@imdea.org 
Phone: +34 91 727 81 00

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