Torres Fuentes, Cristina

Torres Fuentes, Cristina

Dr Torres’ PhD thesis (Spanish Research Council – CSIC) was focused on the purification and characterization of bioactive peptides for functional foods. Then, she was Postdoctoral Researcher for over 5 years at University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland, under the supervision of John Cryan, a world leading researcher in the field of the gut microbiota. She was affiliated to the Department of Food for Health Ireland (2012-2013) and to the APC Microbiome Institute (2014-2017), ranked #1 globally for research in antimicrobial and therapeutic microbes and among the top 5 institutions for microbiome research. She investigated natural bioactive compounds with the ability to modulate appetite for the treatment and/or prevention of metabolic disorders and was involved in industry-funded projects to identify new strains of probiotics with anti-obesity effects. In 2017, she joined the Food Sciences and Technology Department, University of California, Davis, ranked #1 in USA in agriculture, where she studied probiotics with anti-inflammatory potential in animal models of colitis. Currently, she is visiting lecturer at the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology from Rovira i Virgili University (URV), Spain. She studies the interaction of the intestinal microbiota with biological rhythms and the activity of bioactive compounds in metabolic syndrome.

Project: Interaction between protein hydrolysates and gut microbiota: prebiotic potential and promotion of postbiotics production with antihypertensive effects (reference: 2021MFP-COFUND-4)