Cellular and Molecular Nutrition

Program Description: 

Cellular and Molecular Nutrition is the study of interactions between man and his environment at a cellular and molecular level, with specific reference to nutritional environment.  These interactions could also be studied at system or whole body levels, such that the information generated can be the scientific basis of a “cell to society” concept for addressing national nutritional problems. 

Health and well-being in the population depends on nutritional status to a large extent.  Addressing the relationships between health, environment and well-being requires the development of different scientific capacities, starting at the cellular level and leading up to community level studies and interventions.  The cellular and molecular nutrition group will provide the basic information dealing with causes and mechanisms of disease, leading to rational strategies for problem identification and solving, and finally resulting in appropriate and rational management of community interventions.  Further downstream, cellular and molecular approaches to evaluating the efficacy of nutritional interventions is also very important.  The cellular and molecular nutrition programs could also lead to the development of effective markers of tools to conduct surveillance on a population to identify and prevent nutrition associated disease.

The future of rational and effective therapies will depend on the ability of science to characterize a person’s genetic information such that susceptibilities and risks associated with changing environment can be tailored to individual needs.  Indeed, it is predicted that, such strategies will lead to the next generation of healthcare by 2030 (Vicente, 2020).

The proposed program would result in an integration of many fields of scientific activity, such as genetics, molecular biology, biotechnology, immunology and so on, for their most optimal utilization for modern nutritional science.  The cellular and molecular nutrition program will provide direction to future initiatives in these fields, directed towards nutrition, and perhaps generate a new science arena in Iran.

The graduates of this program will, over the next 10 years, form a significant capability which will serve the needs of nutrition education and research expertise in Iran.  More importantly, the cellular and molecular nutrition MSc program will, through the graduation of its candidates, provide potential skilled graduates for further doctoral training and to provide a cohort of trained research assistants for the expansion of molecular and cellular approaches to science in general and food and nutrition science in particular. 

Objectives :

The goals of the MSc in Cellular and Molecular Nutrition program are to train nutrition graduates who can provide skills and support to addressing fundamental questions of food and nutrition sciences.  The ultimate goal is to have trained professionals who can work efficiently in solving health and nutritional problems within the cell to society concept.