Emerging Research Opportunities

Crops For Health™ (CFH) is an avenue for immediate and logical extension of our discovery process to the global stage, providing a conduit for extending our training programs to students around the world, and opening the door to funding opportunities that would not otherwise exist.  Emerging opportunities are briefly described.

The Aspen Grille is currently the focal point for Crops For Health™ activity as 1) a community outreach laboratory in which strategies are being developed to evaluate farm grown foods for health benefits in a manner that involves the restaurant industry throughout the process in order to facilitate rapid dissemination of research findings into the community, 2) a point of integration for involving Arts and Humanities faculty and students to participate in CFH via the development of menus and recipes for research that reflect the cultures and cuisines of the world, and 3) a testing ground for developing transdisciplinary approaches that illustrate how juxtaposing a globally-oriented discovery program can enhance the students’ learning experience.

Animal Health Discussions have been initiated with the leadership of the Animal Cancer Center who is spearheading the development of the Cancer Biology at Colorado State University. This exciting activity when considered in conjunction with the work originating within the Crops For Health™ initiative is seen as a major opportunity for integrated extension of mutual interests in both programs into the area of natural products and their use in complementary and alternative medicine. The National Institutes of Health supports five Botanical Research Centers around the country along this thematic basis and we envision competing for such a center to be located at Colorado State University. Such an activity supports current work of faculty focused on in the medicinal use of plants, the health of companion animals and of the use of companion animals as a model for comparative research on human disease processes.

Healthy People-Healthy Microbes Symbiotic relationships between microbes and humans and other animals are a dominant theme of life on our microbe-dominated planet. The total number of microbes that colonize our body surfaces exceeds our total number of somatic and germ cells by an estimated 10-fold. The majority of our symbiots reside in our intestines where they provide us with traits we have not had to evolve on our own. In this sense, we should view ourselves as a composite of species, and our metabolic features as an amalgamation of human and microbial attributes. This amalgamation is profoundly affected by the food crops and animal products that we ingest. Understanding the role of the microbial ecology of the gut in the pathogenesis of chronic diseases and how food crop and animal product consumption can be combined to reduce disease risk represents an important opportunity for collaborative projects in Crops For Health™. It is envisaged that short-term ecological studies of the monogastric gut in response to alternative diets may be an effective manner to screen dietary sources that may provide protection from chronic disease. This may be more important in food sourced from animals rather than plants because these are typically outbred and far more heterogeneous in composition than foods from inbred crops. Initial efforts to develop this area are being coordinated by Dorian Garrick, Department of Animal Sciences, who is the Colorado State University Director on the National Beef Cattle Evaluation Consortium (NBCEC), a federally funded consortium of Universities (Cornell, U of Georgia, Iowa State & CSU) involved in delivering national beef cattle improvement programs.

Weight loss and weight maintenance Obesity has become a global epidemic and is considered the major contributor to most if not all of the chronic disease burden we face in the 21st century. Because the etiology of obesity involves complex interactions of multiple genes and an environment characterized by little requirement for physical activity for daily activities and an abundance of palatable, energy dense food, the challenges ahead are formidable. Weight loss and maintenance approaches used to date have been largely unsuccessful in achieving long-term individual and community goals. New, innovative approaches are needed to prevent diet-induced metabolic adaptations (decreased resting energy expenditure and satiety hormones and increases in hunger hormones) that antagonize efforts toward permanent weight loss. To this end, CFH will focus on identification of foods with bioactive components capable of favorably altering the energy balance equation. Studies conducted by Chris Melby in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, have shown that plant based diets characterized by high intakes of a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and dietary fibers protect against unhealthy weight gain while readily satisfying hunger and promoting satiety. Henry Thompson in the Cancer Prevention Center at CSU has shown such a plant-based diet to produce weight loss without conscious caloric restriction. Based on these results, scientists in the Departments of FSHN and Health and Exercise Science and the Cancer Prevention Laboratory are now joining forces to identify bioactive food components capable of increasing post-prandial thermogenesis and basal energy expenditure, stimulating fat oxidation, lessening hunger, and promoting satiety. Studies will follow to examine the efficacy of these dietary components to reduce body fat, as well their potential to favorably alter hormonal and inflammatory responses that contribute to and exacerbate obesity-related comorbidities including hypertension, dyslipidemia, and insulin resistance. Translation of this research will focus on using our findings to develop innovative weight loss/maintenance initiatives through the Heart Disease Prevention Program in HES, the soon-to-be-established Nutrition Counseling and Education Center in FSHN, and the Aspen Grille in the Lory Student Center.