ISAPP board member Prof. Colin Hill receives Career Achievement Research Award from University College Cork

This month, ISAPP board member and former president Professor Colin Hill received a prestigious award from University College Cork (Ireland), where he has worked since 1992: The UCC Career Achievement Research Award. The prize honours leading researchers whose influential work has been recognized globally. Hill’s research interests lie in molecular microbiology—specifically, issues around infection. His […]

New Spanish-language e-book about fermented foods now available for download

By Dr. Gabriel Vinderola, PhD,  Associate Professor of Microbiology at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering from the National University of Litoral and Principal Researcher from CONICET at Dairy Products Institute (CONICET-UNL), Santa Fe, Argentina Fermented foods and beverages such as yogurt, wine, beer, kefir, kombucha, kimchi, and miso are created with the help of microbes. […]

Opportunity for research grants to help understand evidence linking live dietary microbes and health

For thousands of years, cultures across the globe have been consuming fermented foods, many of which contain diverse and numerous live microbes. Yet scientists are still puzzling over whether a greater intake of live microbes results in measurably better health. As part of long-term efforts to understand evidence for the health benefits of live dietary […]

Current status of research on probiotic and prebiotic mechanisms of action

By Mary Ellen Sanders, PhD, ISAPP Executive Science Officer Human intervention studies in the fields of probiotics and prebiotics assess the health effects of these ingredients, whether it’s improving specific symptoms or preventing the occurrence of a health condition. Yet scientists in the field recognize the importance of learning the ‘chain of events’ by which […]

Citizen scientists step up for a research project on women’s health

By Prof. Sarah Lebeer, Research Professor in Microbiology and Molecular Biology, Department of Bioscience Engineering, University of Antwerp, Belgium Lactobacilli are a very important group of bacteria that live on the human body and in many other environments on Earth. They have been linked to human health for more than 100 years already, but mainly […]

Precision approaches to microbiota modulation: Using specific fiber structures to direct the gut microbial ecosystem for better health

By now, hundreds of scientific articles show the differences in gut microbiota composition and function between states of health and disease, leading to the idea that gut microbiota modulation is a promising way to achieve better health. But in practice, changing the complex community of microbes in the gut has proved challenging—the gut microbiota of […]

New publication co-authored by ISAPP board members gives an overview of probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, and postbiotics in infant formula

For meeting the nutritional needs of infants and supporting early development, human milk is the ideal food—and this is reflected in breastfeeding guidelines around the world, including the World Health Organization’s recommendation that babies receive human milk exclusively for the first six months of life and that breastfeeding be continued, along with complementary foods, up […]

Can the microbiota help protect against viral infections? Summary of an ISAPP discussion group

By Drs. Karen Scott, University of Aberdeen, and Sarah Lebeer, University of Antwerp As part of the ISAPP virtual annual meeting 2020, around 85 members of the ISAPP community joined us in a Zoom discussion forum to discuss the topic: “Do our resident microbes help protect against viral infections?” A scientific perspective on this topic […]

New synbiotic definition lays the groundwork for continued scientific progress

By Karen Scott, Mary Ellen Sanders, Kelly Swanson, Glenn Gibson, and Bob Hutkins When Glenn Gibson and Marcel Roberfroid first introduced the prebiotic concept in 1995, they also conceived that prebiotics could be combined with probiotics to form synbiotics. In 2011, Gibson and Kolida described additional criteria for defining synbiotics and proposed that synbiotics could […]

ISAPP Conference Session

New Probiotic and Prebiotic Society Among Ibero-American Countries

By Prof. Gabriel Vinderola PhD,  Associate Professor of Microbiology at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering from the National University of Litoral and Principal Researcher from CONICET at Dairy Products Institute (CONICET-UNL), Santa Fe, Argentina On February 8, 2019, within the framework of the X Workshop of the Spanish Society for Microbiota, Probiotics and Prebiotics (SEMiPyP), […]