Well founded answers to my patients' questions through my research

UEG Rising Star Timon Adolph is consultant gastroenterologist and principal investigator at the Medical University Innsbruck, Austria. In 2022, he received an ERC Starting Grant. Timon seeks to explore the concept of metabolic gut inflammation in inflammatory bowel diseases, to develop targeted nutritional therapies. Within this concept, he has established his own research group and the concept of lipid-induced gut inflammation. His research aims at developing this concept by mechanistic means and translating their findings to human IBD. 
 

What is your vision for the advancement of your field? 
I envision a broad evidence-based use for dietary therapy in inflammatory bowel diseases. Accumulating experimental evidence indicates a detrimental role for inflammatory constituents and nutrients in a Western diet. This knowledge deserves to be translated into dietary therapy in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases, which warrants controlled nutritional trials that can hold up with medical trials. I am convinced that this requires governmental funding, awareness for dietary approaches in patients and stakeholders and, importantly, large scale clinical trials. 

How do you find continual enjoyment in what you are doing? 
I strongly believe that we can improve patient care with simple adaptations to the diet, while we largely lack evidence for specific dietary advice. Nevertheless, patients ask you in your daily praxis how to eat and what the role of the diet on their disease really is. As there is virtually no clear answer to this, I feel strongly motivated to understand immunologic mechanisms of chronic gut inflammation that is elicited or modulated by specific dietary constituents in a genetically susceptible host. Precision nutrition may change the way we look at inflammatory bowel diseases, and the fact that there is about 25.000 nutrients and chemical components in our diet makes us search the needle in a haystack. I enjoy studying (and hopefully understanding) complex issues. 

To what or whom are you grateful? 
I am very grateful for my academic and clinical education and especially the opportunity to develop my own ideas and concepts over the last decade. This was only possible because I have enjoyed working with experts in the field who supported and guided me throughout the years. Moreover, this track is only possible because I had the opportunity to work with very talented hardworking researchers early in my carrier. Their passion converted our ideas to evidence. And finally, I consider myself lucky to receive substantial funding that allowed me to initiate and continue to work on the concept of metabolic gut inflammation in inflammatory bowel disease.