Tackling Challenges - Health, Environment and Food
At DCU Life Sciences Institute, our mission is to Transform Challenges into Impact.
Our Challenge-Based Research Programme, aims to deliver on that promise by developing solutions to specific national and global problems.
The programme brings together multi-disciplinary teams focused on making an impact on real-world challenges in three key areas.
Health Challenge
‘Resistance’ in many different forms is an emerging global crisis. This includes resistance to our treatments against various diseases caused by bacteria, viruses and cancer - and even community resistance against conventional medicine and public health guidance.
Our multidisciplinary teams are working to understand resistance in all its forms and develop solutions that are biologically robust, clinically effective, and societally accepted.
Our other health challenge is ‘Dependence’. For example, the growing dependence on nicotine products, through e-cigarettes and other alternatives is a major concern.
LSI scientists are working to understand the long term biological impacts, from airway injury to metabolic effects to cancer risk, while developing prevention strategies that inform public health policy and education.
You can view projects in our Health Challenge here.
Environment Challenge
Climate change and modern living are reshaping the human exposome - in other words our lifetime environmental exposures.
At the LSI, we’re researching how the body’s exposure to air, water, soil, chemicals, temperature, and lifestyle influence human health and disease outcomes.
For example, we’ve been exploring how lifetime environmental exposure to metals such as copper, lead, zinc, and cadmium may be influencing cancer risk, progression, and therapeutic vulnerability.
By developing a greater understanding in the exposome area, we could reveal hidden causes of illness, explain vulnerability, and guide prevention for healthier ageing.
You can view projects in our Environment Challenge here.
Food Challenge
Agricultural food production is essential for human survival on the planet, but the impact of modern farming on biodiversity and climate is enormous.
Almost 45pc of the worldwide wild rural landscape has been converted to agricultural land or urbanised landscape, and 70% of wildlife species have seen their populations plummet since the 1970s.
One of the solutions being explored at the LSI is ‘Precision Fermentation’. This involves turning renewable resources into nutritious foods.
By developing new food production processes, we can reduce pressure on land, support resilient food systems, and create healthier alternatives.
These are just some of the ways in which the LSI’s Challenge-Based Research programme is addressing emerging issues across health, the environment, and food - working collaboratively, nationally and internationally to ‘Transform Challenges into Impact.’