Functional Foods – New Challenges For Balanced Nutrition And The Treatment Of Metabolic Disorders

An event for undergraduate and pHd students at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (INFUL)

From the 26-28th of October 2022, our partners from the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv organised a special event for undergraduate and PhD students within the Department of Biochemistry at IFNUL.

The “Functional Foods – New Challenges For Balanced Nutrition And The Treatment Of Metabolic Disorders” summer school was hosted as a hybrid event, using the ResBios framework.

The aim of this Summer school was to provide participants an introduction to the concept of healthy foods, an emerging field which connects food sciences to the pharmaceutical sciences. Students were invited to take part in didactic lectures, interactive discussion sessions, and group workshops, linking pharmaceutical sciences to nutraceuticals and functional foods concepts.

The school was specifically designed to attract young researchers, and give them the opportunity to learn how to evaluate experimental data obtained from the scientific literature and epidemiological sources, and how this data can be used as a basis to generate ideas for further research and investigation. Participants also critically evaluated the current literature relating to innovation and development, as well as how novel functional foods are marketed.

Over these three days, students heard contributions from two associate lecturers from the Department of Biochemistry of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (Dr. Halyna Hachkova and Dr. Mariia Nagalievska), discussing “Biologically active carbohydrates, lipids and peptides as representatives of functional food products” and “Analysis of the daily diet of each participant. Detection of functional food products in the diet. Calculation of the glycemic index of consumed food”.

In addition to this, external speakers were also invited to contribute, including Prof. Dr. Sc., Ass. Prof. Justyna Ruchała, from University of Rzeszow (Poland)- “Fantastic Microorganisms and How to Study Them”, ‪Dr. Petro Starokadomskyy‬, University of Texas (USA)- “Discovery immunology – how to find new molecule in cell”, Dr Dmitry Samarsky, Sirnaomics Inc. (USA)- “Development of the new drugs based on RNA interferenve (RNAi)”, and Dr. Sc., PhD Nicolai M Doliba, University of Pennsylvania (USA)- “Glucose sensing, bioenergetics and hormone secretion in diabetic human pancreatic islets”.

Following these sessions, participants were also given the opportunity to practically use some of the concepts discussed, with practical training using various software products for calculating glycemic index and food analysis for health benefits, and practical training in the laboratory (determining blood glucose and glycosylated hemoglobin in rats with diabetes mellitus and metabolic syndrome).

This event was a fantastic opportunity for the 45 participants (6 lecturers, 6 PhD students, and 33 students of university) who attended to learn more about the practical application of the subject, and to hear from a variety of experts in the this field.

More information: comms@resbios.eu