Precision Nutrition Symposium 2025

On 20 November, the first Precision Nutrition Symposium took place at the NOI Techpark in Bolzano. Developed and organized by the Institute for Biomedicine of Eurac Research, the event brought together around 80 invited guests and several distinguished keynote speakers from various fields of research to explore how nutrition shapes human health.

The symposium, hosted and moderated by Essi Hantikainen from Eurac Research, opened with insights from the long-running CHRIS population study. In her talk, Rebecca Lundin (Eurac Research) emphasized that the rich health data generated by CHRIS provide an exceptional foundation for precision nutrition research and offer a valuable resource for the field.

Among the experts contributing to the programme was Nicola Segata from the University of Trento, one of the world’s leading scientists in metagenomics and microbiome research. In his keynote “Metagenomics on the diet–microbiome–health axis,” he discussed factors shaping the gut microbiome and how microbiome diversity impacts individual response to foods.

Renowned epidemiologist Marta Guasch-Ferré from the University of Copenhagen addressed how diet acts as a central driver of cardiometabolic health and how metabolomics can help develop personalized nutritional strategies for disease prevention.

Pedro Mena from the University of Parma—an internationally recognized expert on (poly)phenols, bioactive dietary compounds, and metabolomics—explored how (poly)phenols can be harnessed to support tailored health interventions considering inter-individual variability in the metabolism and bioavailability.

The symposium featured outstanding early-career researchers representing different research groups. Giulia Barbieri from the Institute for Biomedicine of Eurac Research focused her talk on dietary patterns, metabolomic signatures, and metabolic outcomes across menopausal stages.

Following the keynote lectures, the keynote speakers engaged in a panel discussion focused on challenges and opportunities of precision nutrition research. The strong interest in the symposium clearly demonstrated that precision nutrition, viewed as a modifiable, targeted determinant of health and disease risk, is becoming an essential pillar of biomedical research and prevention within the broader vision of Precision Health.