The NuGO proof of principle study package: a collaborative research effort of the European Nutrigenomics Organisation

The European Nutrigenomics Organisation (NuGO; www.nugo.org ) was established in 2004 and is funded within the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission as a network of excellence [ 4 ]. The core partners forming NuGO are 23 research units based at universities and research centers. The key objectives of NuGO are: (a) the promotion of molecular nutrition research in Europe; (b) the development and promotion of mechanistic research in nutrition, food and health research by application of omics technologies; and (c) to develop joint research programs. The NuGO Proof of Principle Study package (NuGO PPS) started in 2007 and is one of the collaborative research initiatives within NuGO. The main goals of the NuGO PPS are to: (a) assess the advantages and the limitations of omics applications in nutritional studies; (b) prove that systems biology approaches can provide a better description of the health/disease status of an organism; (c) prove NuGO’s ability as a network of excellence to analyze complex data sets obtained from a federated series of studies, performed at many partner sites, analyzed in different omics platforms in combination with statistics and bioinformatics in an integrative way; and finally (d) optimize the convergence in data sharing by implementing a data integration platform.