Employing institution: The Federal Institute of Industrial Research Oshodi Lagos
Host institution: Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (UAM and CSIC)
Project title:
Building Research capacity in the development of health-promoting foods from selected novel microalgal strains for the management of type-2 diabetes.
Dr Tosin Olasehinde is a Researcher at the Nutrition and Toxicology Division, Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi, Lagos, Nigeria. He was awarded The World Academy of Science and National Research Foundation of South Africa PhD Fellowship. He received post-doctoral research training from the University of Kwazulu-Natal. His research interest cut across Nutritional Biochemistry and Neurochemistry, Functional Foods, Nutraceuticals, Molecular pharmacology and Toxicology.
AREF Fellowship research project
During the placement, Dr Olasehinde will use eco-innovative technologies and omics techniques to obtain nutritionally high- value products and bioactive compounds from novel microalgal strains that can be incorporated into diet and investigate their antidiabetic potentials. Dr Olasehinde will learn new methods related to microalgal biotechnology and omics techniques and will be able to train junior scientists and students in his institution by cascading the knowledge and skills learnt during his placement. A sedentary lifestyle, an unhealthy diet, and a large aging population has contributed to an increase in the number of individuals living with diabetes. In the last 30 years, diabetes mellitus has reached epidemic proportions and attributes to approximately 90% of the diabetic cases globally, 75% of which reside within developing countries. There has been search for alternative therapy for the treatment of diabetes with less and harmful side effects and capacity to mitigate its progression and associated complications which most synthetic antidiabetic drugs do not possess. However, natural products and functional foods have proven to be good alternative strategies and microalgae has shown great potentials due to their ability to produce bioactive compounds with health promoting effects. Hence, the goal of this fellowship is to acquire skills to develop health promoting foods and using microalgal biotechnological and eco-innovative techniques to produce algal biomass and extracts with high valued nutritional and therapeutic products and investigate their anti-diabetic effects.
Quote
“The AREF fellowship is a great opportunity to explore new technologies to produce novel microalgal strains and develop high valued products and bioactive compounds to combat diabetes. This opportunity will also provide the capacity to build international reputation as a researcher in the development of functional food products and bioactive agents to combat degenerative diseases.”
Dr Tosin expects to start his fellowship in January 2025wship in July 2024