Northern Ireland Centre for Food and Health (NICHE)
Centre for Molecular Biosciences
University of Ulster
Coleraine

The primary role for UU will be conducting the human intervention study to validate the efficacy of the LMWP as a prebiotic.

The University of Ulster includes the Northern Ireland Centre for Food and Health (NICHE) and is the pre-eminent university department in the UK and Ireland in the area of nutrition and health in addition it ts one of the top nutrition research units in Europe.

In the latest UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), the department was awarded, for the second time, the highest rating 5* (equates to research of international excellence in most areas of activity).
NICHE is a recognised centre of excellence for nutrition research with very strong international collaborations and is the recognised European Union training centre for studies on dietary components with health promoting properties ("dietpromo").

UU (NICHE) is dedicated primarily to the carrying out of nutritional intervention trials on human volunteers.
A state of-the-art human intervention studies unit (HISU) enables research to be undertaken in humans using specially-designed living quarters in which human volunteers may be accommodated for days or weeks at a time.
Studies may thus range from strictly controlled residential trials featuring a range of metabolic measurements, to non-residential trials with periodic checks.

Food manufacturers have been quick to recognise that health claims in relation to food products now come under considerable scrutiny from international legislative bodies. One of the most important roles of NICHE is to perform rigorous scientific testing of potential health benefits associated with food products and dietary supplements, thus substantiating the claims of those products together with the discovery of new health benefits.
It is this resource and the associated experience and expertise in running such studies that is critical to this proposal.

NICHE has extensive experience of both co-ordinating and participating in nutrition research projects and currently has 80 researchers working on a wide variety of nutrition issues.