Gut Health

Gut health is important for overall health and wellbeing. Intestinal distress is linked to a variety of conditions including anxiety, stress, as well as chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes. CSIRO has been working in the Gut Health space for over 30 years to understand the role of nutrition, gastrointestinal physiology and health. These include innovations in the fields of dietary fibre/resistant starch, gut diagnostics and microbiome profiling and functional characterisation. CSIRO collaborates with universities and research institutes as well as industry partners to develop novel food and nutraceutical products, from “paddock to plate” such as BARLEYmaxTM  with substantiated health claims to benefit the people of Australia and the world.

Areas of expertise

  • Microbiome – conventional and molecular methods identify microbial populations, activities and metabolites leading to development of products and strategies which promote health
    microbiome-host interactions
  • Gut-brain axis – Communication between the brain and gut and how it influence by the gastrointestinal microbiota – Opportunity to food design for cognition, healthy aging and infant brain development.
  • Cardio-Metabolic health – linking the microbiome, peptides and gut hormones in modulating glycemic control and inflammation
  • Gut diagnostics – developing new technologies to better assess gut health
    gut barrier integrity – “leaky gut”

Capabilities

  • Lab-based methods including nutrient composition analyses, in vitro gut digestibility and fermentation models, cell culture, organoids, isolation and characterisation of microbes, metabolomics and metagenomics
  • Pre-clinical assessment of novel food and products in models of various gut conditions
  • State-of-the-art clinical trial testing facilities to substantiate gut health products
    research on gut conditions such as inflammatory diseases, irritable bowel and colorectal cancer

Feature projects

  • CSIRO healthy gut diets
  • Consumer gut heath surveys
  • Novel grains (high amylose wheat)
  • Development of novel food and nutraceutical products (prebiotics and probiotics)
    post-graduate projects in collaboration with universities, research institutes and industries

Contact us

Dr Welma Stonehouse

Group Leader, Principal Research Scientist

Dr Cuong Tran

Team Leader, Senior Research Scientist