UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Can plants evolved to resist infection help humans do the same? With a nearly $640,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Joshua Kellogg and his colleagues at Penn State plan to study how produce can improve inflammatory bowel diseases.
Kellogg, assistant professor in the Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, will lead a research team in the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences to investigate how foods such as mushrooms, peppers, carrots and berries interact with the gut microbiome to understand their effects on gastrointestinal inflammation and disease.
Kellogg said inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are an increasingly important global health problem. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 3.1 million adults in the U.S. have been diagnosed with IBD, including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
Inflammatory bowel diseases are characterized by chronic inflammation and ulceration of the colon, abdominal pain, weight loss, bloody diarrhea and an increased risk of several other diseases, including colorectal cancer and type 2 diabetes.
“While dietary, drug and biological therapies have been useful in managing IBD, the primary treatment currently available is surgical resectioning of the colon,” said Kellogg, who holds a dual appointment in the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. “In addition to not being curative, surgical options have significant side effects, including increased risk of infection.”
The aryl hydrocarbon receptor — AHR — is a crucial regulator in the gastrointestinal tract, promoting balance in the gut while lowering inflammation and protecting against numerous diseases. Botanicals contain hundreds of different phytochemicals — which help plants resist infection — and have been shown to have beneficial health effects in humans, Kellogg said.
According to Kellogg, consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts and fungi has been linked to improved gastrointestinal health and lower inflammation. Various foods, including broccoli, corn, mushrooms, carrots and berries, have demonstrated the ability to activate the AHR in several studies, Kellogg said.
However, the chemical agents of these foods responsible for this activity remain unknown. Kellogg and his team will develop novel chemical profiling and data modeling approaches to tease apart the differing chemical signatures and identify which molecules can activate the AHR.
Andrew Patterson, professor of molecular toxicology and the John T. and Paige S. Smith Professor, and Gary Perdew, H. Thomas and Dorothy Willits Hallowell Chair in Agricultural Sciences, are co-investigators on the award. Together, the team will investigate the interface of food, nutrition and the gut microbiome and their downstream effects on chronic human disease.
Kellogg noted that information from the study could aid supplement manufacturers and consumers by enhancing understanding of the relationship between phytochemistry and bioactivity of vegetable crops and botanicals.
“This work may lead to a greater understanding of the botanical phytochemicals and their AHR activity and help guide dietary recommendations that modulate AHR activity to improve human gastrointestinal health and combat chronic gastrointestinal diseases,” he said.