PAS-GRAS

Reversal and prevention of obesity in the most vulnerable populations.

The PAS-GRAS project addresses the main determinants that contribute to the transgenerational risk of obesity in the most vulnerable populations, including children in the prepubertal stage, adolescents and young adults, in order to reverse and prevent obesity and avoid the emergence of related comorbidities.

To do this, PAS-GRAS determines lifestyle habits (diet, physical activity/sedentary activity) and other factors such as mental health, socio-familial and environmental factors, and genetic and metabolic characteristics. The integration of all this data will make possible to assess the risk on an individual basis and to design nutritional intervention strategies and therapies to prevent and/or treat obesity.

PAS-GRAS takes a transdisciplinary life course approach focused on participatory interventions that will be designed together with overweight and obese people and their families.

Therefore, the objectives of the PAS-GRAS project can be summarized as:

• Identify the factors (biological and environmental) that increase the risk of developing obesity and other complications.
• Identify genetic and epigenetic parameters in early stages of life that predict the possible appearance of obesity.
• Identify and study new blood markers that indicate a communication between the brain and the other organs of the body that ultimately leads to the development of diseases associated with obesity.
• Design and validate nutritional strategies based on natural products that can serve as intervention guides for adults and children.
• Generate digital tools that facilitate commitment and participation in healthy nutritional and physical activity programs, incorporating gender equality and social inclusion.

The increasing appearance of obesity in the wake of the world affects not only the global well-being of society, but also generates an unsustainable burden for national health systems. To address the problem, PAS-GRAS envisages a multidisciplinary approach involving biomedicine, social sciences and the humanities to design common strategies and effective interventions.

Eurecat participates in the PAS-GRAS project through its Biotechnology Area units, in charge of the following tasks:

Nutrition and Health Unit:

• Preclinical study in rodent models for the search for therapeutic approaches that prevent the metabolic programming that leads to obesity in the offspring.
• Clinical study of nutritional and lifestyle intervention based on a personalized adaptation of the Mediterranean diet combined with different natural products to reduce the risk factors associated with overweight and obesity.
• Co-creation of creative and interactive digital tools, such as comics, videos and physical activity programs, for the empowerment of the vulnerable population in the fight against obesity.

Omic Sciences Unit:

• Study of the epigenomic and metabolic imprints that can stratify obesity and the associated risks.
• Analysis of different biochemical parameters (epigenetics, gene expression and metabolism) from clinical and preclinical studies.

PAS-GRAS, led by the University of Coimbra (Portugal), is made up of 16 organizations from eight different countries.