The National Institutes of Health is awarding $170 million over five years, pending the availability of funds, to clinics and centers across the country who will recruit 10,000 participants for a new, dynamic study to develop algorithms that predict individual responses to food and dietary patterns.

The funding will support the NIH Common Fund’s Nutrition for Precision Health, powered by the All of Us Research Program (NPH), an initiative to improve the understanding of nutrition and inform more personalized nutrition recommendations.

Awarded by the NIH as one of six national Clinical Centers, the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University and the Gastroenterology Division at Massachusetts General Hospital will receive $8.65 million to participate in the five-year national NPH effort.

The HNRCA will collect data from a cohort of 2,000 people from the All of Us Research Program—an initiative with a goal of building one of the most diverse health databases in history—with the All of Us New England program partners Mass General, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Boston Medical Center.

The collaboration of Boston health care institutions led by Tufts will be formally known as the Clinical Center for NIH’s Nutrition for Precision Health: The All of Us New England Research Collaborative.

“This national initiative will provide the much-needed data to move away from one-size-fits-all diet recommendations and create customized diet plans for people based on individual differences, such as metabolism, nutritional status, and genetics,” says Sai Das PhD, a scientist on the HNRCA’s Energy Metabolism Team, who is leading the HNRCA’s efforts.

“This is an incredibly ambitious project that has the potential to transform the field of nutrition science,” says Hamed Khalili MD, MPH, a gastroenterologist who is leading the Mass General research team. “The wealth of collected data will ultimately allow us to personalize dietary recommendations to optimize health outcomes.”  

A major challenge in precision nutrition is the inability to combine the many factors that affect how individuals respond to diet into a personalized nutrition regimen.

These potential factors include the microbiome–the community of microbes that live in our gut—as well as metabolism, nutritional status, genetics, and the environment.

How these factors interact to affect health is still poorly understood. In their proposal, HNRCA and MGH will enroll a total of 2,000 participants from All of Us New England, to examine individual responses to a mixed-meal challenge and three short-term intervention diets.

All of Us will contribute existing data from participants who agree to participate in the NPH study, including genomics, linked electronic health records, and survey data, such as information on daily life experiences, family health, and more. These data linkages will power Nutrition for Precision Health to be one of the largest, most diverse precision nutrition studies to date.

To learn more, watch an overview video of the Nutrition for Precision Health, and visit https://commonfund.nih.gov/nutritionforprecisionhealth

About the All of Us Research Program: The mission of the All of Us Research Program is to accelerate health research and medical breakthroughs, enabling individualized prevention, treatment, and care for all of us. The program is partnering with over one million people across the United States to build the most diverse biomedical data resource of its kind, to help researchers gain better insights into the biological, environmental, and behavioral factors that influence health. For more information, visit www.JoinAllofUs.org/NewEngland.

About the Mass General Research Institute
Research at Massachusetts General Hospital is interwoven through more than 30 different departments, centers and institutes. Our research includes fundamental, lab-based science; clinical trials to test new drugs, devices and diagnostic tools; and community and population-based research to improve health outcomes across populations and eliminate disparities in care.
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