The Ammodo Science Award for fundamental research is presented every two years to eight outstanding mid-career scientists across the four scientific domains of Biomedical Sciences, Humanities, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences. Jingyuan Fu's recognition as a laureate in the domain of Biomedical Sciences is a testament to her groundbreaking research on the human gut microbiome and its potential impact on human health.
Jingyuan Fu is professor of Systems Medicine at the University Medical Centre Groningen. Jingyuan Fu studies the gut microbiome in relation to disease and health. Her research combines cohort-based big data analysis, bacterial culturomics, and organ-on-a-chip technologies. Her research work on complex diseases, such as obesity and cardiovascular disease, and the host-microbe metabolic interactions has been particularly impressive, as her study has suggested that the gut microbiome can be manipulated to improve human health. This makes the microbiome an important starting point for disease prevention and treatment. She plans to use the award prize to enrich omics data generation in the Dutch Microbiome Project and develop personalized in-vitro model that can physiologically mimic the microbe-gut-liver axis of the human body.
Her previous works have established the microbial fingerprint that the gut microbiome can be individual specific and to some extent stable over time, revealed that our gut microbiome, eating habits and genes have a major influence on the quantities and composition of the metabolites in our blood, and therefore on our health, discovered novel microbial genes that can participate in the metabolism of bile acids, important metabolites involved in lipid metabolism, signaling pathways, and immune regulation, and demonstrated sex-dependent ageing effect on cardiometabolic risk. She is also one of the researchers of the Groningen Microbiome Team. They have shown that our genes influence the composition of our gut microbiome.
Jingyuan Fu previously received an ERC Grant and a VICI Grant from NWO for her research. She was previously nominated for the Prix Galien Research Award for her research that focuses on microbiome as key for individual treatment.
For more information about the Ammodo Awards, visit ammodo-science-award.org
