INITIALISE project
INITIALISE (Inflammation in human early life: targeting impacts on life-course health) is an EU funded project that aims to elucidate how exposures and genome impact gut microbiome, host immune system and metabolism, and how the interplay of these factors impact life-course health. INITIALISE aims to define the role of the maturation of the immune system as a mediator between exposures and life-course health.
About us
We aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the immune system development, including the in utero period.
INITIALISE will provide an unprecedented in-depth overview of how the immune systems develops pre- and postnatally, how the specific exogenous and endogenous factors shape it, and how they together contribute to risks of specific adverse health outcomes.
We aim to derive and validate specific and common molecular signatures associated with progression to diverse adverse health outcomes, across immune, metabolic, and neurocognitive domains.
INITIALISE will include multiple health outcomes in the design of longitudinal multiomics studies. This will provide comprehensive overviews of which environmental, genetic and host phenotypic factors are disease-specific, and which are generally associated with poor health outcomes later in life.
We aim to improve life-course health by preventive treatments targeting the developing immune system.
INITIALISE will set up a clinical demonstrator study where infants will be stratified based on their risk profile, then randomised into treatment or placebo. We will establish panels of biomarkers associated with outcomes across the three INITIALISE domains. The specific intervention to be used will be selected towards the end of the second year of the project.
Latest Publications
View All 51 →- 2026
Early-life proteomic and microbiome features signal obesity risk across 26 years of follow-up.
mSystems
mSystems. 2026 May;
DOI: 10.1128/msystems.01424-25
Childhood obesity is rising globally. Yet, few studies have examined the microbiome and proteome in early childhood in relation to this outcome, and most are cross-sectional by design. Early-life factors in the ABIS birth cohort (n = 16,683) were associated with obesity up to age 26 (mean follow-up ...
- 2026
Large glycomics datasets as a tool to understand the function of glycans.
Nature chemical biology
Nat Chem Biol. 2026 May;
DOI: 10.1038/s41589-026-02217-x
Historically, glycomics has lagged behind other omics fields, owing to analytical challenges. However, recent technological advances are rapidly transforming the field, enabling a growing number of large-scale studies to harness the wealth of information encoded by glycans. In this Review, we provid...
- 🔓 Open Access2026
Thymic output in human newborns is shaped by environmental exposures and a common TCRD genetic variant.
Journal of human immunity
J Hum Immun. 2026 Jul; 2(4)
Naïve T cell output from the thymus varies across the human lifespan and is a key determinant of health, differing between individuals by age, sex, and genetics. How thymic output is dynamically regulated early in life in response to initial microbial colonization remains unclear. We report longitu...
Read Full Text →
