Cristina Andrés-Lacueva, PhD
Cristina Andres-Lacueva is an Associate Professor at the Nutrition and Food Science Departmentof the Pharmacy School at the University of Barcelona (UB) (candres@ub.edu).
She leads the Biomarkers & Nutritional and Food Metabolomics Group, with Quality Certification from Generalitat de Catalunya as Research Group (Ref.: 2014 SGR 1566), at the UB (www.nutrimetabolomics.com), which focuses its research on the analysis of polyphenols and other bioactive compounds in food, the evaluation of their bioavailability in animals and humans, the characterization of their metabolism in the gastrointestinal tract, the role of microbiota, the identification of their metabolites in body fluids and biological tissues, and the response in the human metabolism using molecular markers. Member of the NUGO EU association (http://www.nugo.org).
In 1998 she obtained her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Barcelona. She did her postdoctoral research at the Neuroscience Laboratory of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (Tufts University, Boston, USA) with the Jim Joseph research group. She has also worked at the Istituto Agrario di San Michele all’Adige (Italy), the Human Nutrition Research Centre of Clermont-Ferrand (France), and the Institute of Gerontology and Geriatrics, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Perugia University Medical School in Italy. In the last 6 years, she has published over 80 indexed research articles and 12 book chapters.
Her main research activity is focused on the development of new nutritional biomarkers and biomarkers of disease risk based on studies of the bioavailability of polyphenols, and on bioactive compounds which can be found as functional ingredients or as natural compounds of food and drink. The methodology applied is based on targeted and/or non-targeted studies using a metabolomic approach (LC-MS/MS, OrbiTrap, RMN).
Dr Cristina Andres-Lacueva conducts research into the role of diet in the development of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, with a particular interest in Mediterranean diet. The research focuses on dietary patterns, foods and specific dietary components, for example from grape, wine, nuts, olive oil, cocoa, berries, using both reported intakes and biomarkers, and is based on large-scale cohort studies and dietary intervention studies. Current funding is focused on identifying robust, sensitive and reliable biomarkers, based on their bioavailability, activity and relationship with the intake of some foods (markers of consumption), and on understanding their association with obesity, aging and the reduction of cardiovascular risk (markers of effect).
