China and UK team up for joint probiotic research
The new centre will build on a long term collaboration between Jiangnan University’s Professor Chen Wei and Professor Arjan Narbad at the IFR that has seen several years of reciprocal visits, knowledge exchange and training.
The new Joint Centre of Probiotic Research will be equally funded by its Chinese and British teams – with Jiangnan University and the UK government’s Newton Fund both providing around 2.2 million Yuan (£250,000).
Professor Wei commented that the joint research will “accelerate our multidisciplinary efforts on probiotics but will also allow development of further collaborations in Food Research that is strategically relevant to both IFR and Jiangnan University.”
The new joint centre will be based in the planned National Engineering Research Center for functional foods in Jiangnan University and also at the IFR on Norwich Research Park in the UK and will allow researchers to tackle challenges facing both China and the UK in the probiotic arena.
According to the IFR, the collaborative working is already bearing fruit – with several joint papers already published, while an ongoing collaborative project is aiming to develop probiotics that can help counter the global issue or antimicrobial resistance.
