DTL’s partner TNO is coordinator of the European Nutritional Phenotype Assessment and Data Sharing Initiative (ENPADASI), a project that officially started its work programme in December 2014. The main objective of ENPADASI is to deliver an open access research infrastructure (DaShiN) that will open data of most European nutritional studies.
The data will adhere to the FAIR data concept that all data should be findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable. Many nutritional studies have been made findable, accessible and re-usable by storing them in the Phenotype database, which development is steered by TNO. These studies include large data sets as they incorporate measurements of different organs and a wide variety of biological molecules (omics technologies). The application will be used for upload of two types of data: a) data that is not yet structured (many biologists store their data in folders with excel sheets), and b) structured data originating from large studies. To guarantee interoperability of non-structured data a FAIRport compliant API will be included in the Phenotype database, whereas for structured data the FAIRport compliant API will be incorporated in the study specific database. Data in these systems should also be mapped to terms in the Phenotype database for re-usability purposes.
Case studies will be defined to evaluate the actual infrastructure and to show the added value of connecting similar studies in resolving chronic diseases with lifestyle related solutions. The hypothesis is that combining studies will increase the power thereby limiting the needs for new and larger intervention studies.
51 partners from 9 Member States are involved in ENPADASI (i.e., Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands). ENPADASI is led by coordinator Jildau Bouwman (TNO) and deputy coordinator Duccio Cavalieri (National Research Council – IBIMET)