Accelerating the transition from animal-based to alternative dietary proteins – the dietary shift – is key to reducing the footprint of our food system in terms of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), energy, water and land use, and other relevant environmental impacts, and for improving the health and well-being of people, animals and the planet. GIANT LEAPS delivers the strategic innovations, methodologies, and open-access datasets to speed up this dietary shift, in line with the Farm-to-Fork strategy and contributing to the Green Deal target of reaching climate neutrality by 2050. Achieving the dietary shift in practice is inherently complex due to the diverse set of actors involved and further hindered by major knowledge gaps, scattered across the various alternative protein sources and the domains of health (safety, allergenicity and digestibility), environment (GHGs and other environmental and climate impacts, biodiversity, circularity), and/or barriers to adoption (technological, sensory, and consumer acceptance). The GIANT LEAPS consortium consists of the key actors and spans all expertise to address relevant knowledge gaps and proactively engages to arrive at optimized future diets based on alternative proteins that are broadly accepted across stakeholder groups. In order to deliver required insights for short-, mid- and long-term decision making and impact, GIANT LEAPS protein sources have been selected for either targeted or full assessment based on their current level of specification. The innovations and improved methods combined with accessible and comprehensive information, generated for a wide collection of alternative proteins, will enable policymakers to prioritise changes in the food system towards the dietary shift based on desired impact, value chain actors to make strategic scientific, business and investment choices, and the general public to make more sustainable and healthy dietary choices.

It is undeniable that protein is an indispensable part of the human diet, but the way we produce and consume it today presents many challenges, in terms of both global consumption patterns and their social, environmental and economic impacts. Providing a growing global population with healthy diets from sustainable food systems is therefore an immediate challenge. SMART PROTEIN aims to industrially validate and demonstrate innovative, cost-effective and resource-efficient, EU-produced, nutritious plant (fava bean, lentil, chickpea, quinoa) and microbial biomass proteins from edible fungi by up-cycling side streams from pasta (pasta residues), bread (bread crust) and beer (spent yeast and malting rootlets) industries. The alternative SMART protein will be used for the production of ingredients and products for direct human consumption, through developing future-proofed protein supply chains with a positive impact on bio-economy, environment, biodiversity, human nutrition, food and nutrition security and consumer trust and acceptance. These priorities will be addressed through global partnerships forged with consortium members from Europe, North America, Israel, Thailand and New Zealand to develop and demonstrate a climate-smart, sustainable protein-food system for a healthy Europe. We will harness plant and microbial protein knowledge to significantly enhance the sustainability and resilience of a new European protein supply chain, improve professional skills and competencies, and support the creation of new jobs in the food sector and bioeconomy.

GEMMA will be the first project to combine a multi-omic approach with robust environmental data to exploit the analysis of the composition and function of the microbiome for personalized treatment and, ultimately, disease interception in infants at risk of Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) . The project will provide solid mechanistic evidence of the disease onset and progression in relation to dynamic changes in abnormal gut microbiota causing epigenetic modifications controlling gut barrier and immune functions, based on the in-depth evaluation of 600 infants at risk observed from birth and followed over time. These data will be integrated with pre-clinical studies to mechanistically link human microbiota composition/function with clinical outcome through humanized murine models transplanted with stools obtained from the ASD proband patient of recruited families. The project will support novel personalized prediction (personalized treatment) and disease interception (prevention) approaches that attempt to modulate gut microbiota to re-establish/maintain immune homeostasis. The biomarkers identified in this project will contribute to a better understanding of the pathogenesis of ASD in at-risk children and the possibility to manipulate the microbiota through pre/pro/symbiotic administration for prevention and treatment, a complete paradigm shift in ASD pathogenesis and early intervention. The identification of specific ASD metabolic phenotypes will further aid to define biomarkers that can be used as diagnostic tools and patient stratification models for other conditions in which the interplay between genome, microbiome and metabolic profile has been suspected or proved. Finally, the project will collect biospecimens from a cohort of 600 infants as risk of ASD observed from birth, generating a unique biobank of 16,000+ blood, stool, urine and saliva samples prospectively collected that can be exploited in future multiomic studies.