Abstract
As the founder and CEO of the Hildegard Grunow Foundation in Munich, we are grateful to the Food and Nutrition Bulletin (FNB) for once again publishing the award lecture of the laureate of the V Rainer Gross Prize. We are proud and honored to support the dissemination of the merits of the winner, Dr. Sun Eun Lee of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. The central theme of applying discovery proteomics in developing countries aligns well in innovation and relevance with the predecessor themes of community improvement (I), zinc (II), inflammation and nutrient status (III) and miniaturized field biomarker measurement (IV). The issues of growth and body-size, micronutrient deficieny s and inflammatory stress are truly relevant to the lives of young children in low-income nations. Plasma samples from a cohort of 500 Nepalese offspring of participating mothers in a large pre-natal supplementation intervention trial formed the basis of discovery proteomics, through screening and filtering, and profiled among over 900 circulating proteins identified, using state-of-art tandem mass spectrometric, statistical and bioinformatics methods.
Working through the aforementioned health and nutrition issues, Dr. Lee and colleagues identified proteins associated with the adequacy of height, weight, mid-arm circumference and mid arm muscle area, a prelude to siagnostic biomarkers. Moreover, by the nature of the protein types (eg, enzymes, transport, regulatory, structural) they provide new and fundamental biological insights. Similar association mining has been conducted with anti-oxidant micronutrients and inflammatory response markers. In the face of millions of children worldwide suffering from nutritional deficiencies that jeopardize their growth and development, the quest for biomarkers to avoid and reverse such malnutrition this focus of inquiry holds promise for improving the health and nutritional status of children within and well beyond the plains of the south Asia. Certainly, the spirit of this research and technology mimiks that displayed in life by the late Rainer Gross, himself, across a record of bold, out-of-the-box thinking and investigation. We hope the FNB readership will be as enthusiastic with this contribution as were the judges for the Prize.