The UCLA Center for Human Nutrition has received a $500,000 grant from Shandong Longlive Bio-technology Co., a China-based company that produces functional sugars. The grant, known as the Shandong Longlive Nutrition Training Fund, will support the center’s postdoctoral training program as well as its study of the microbiome, the collection of gut-dwelling microorganisms that play a vital role in the function of various systems of the body.
Longlive presented the grant to the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition at a ceremony in September at the UCLA Luskin Conference Center.
“We’re so honored to receive this generous gift in our work to advance the field of clinical nutrition,” said Dr. Zhaoping Li, director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition. “This gift will provide support to research in an increasingly important area of medicine and to the next generation of scientists conducting such research.”
Longlive and the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition previously collaborated on a clinical trial in 2011 about the use of prebiotic fibers to increase the amount of good bacteria that live in human intestines. This $500,000 gift marks Longlive’s second donation to the center, following an earlier $100,000 gift in 2013 to support the center’s ongoing research on prebiotics and microbiota.
