The BiomarKid Project

BiomarKid is a European research initiative exploring how diet, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep shape children’s health from infancy through young adulthood. Funded by the JPI HDHL (Joint Programming Initiative – A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life), the project builds on two major long-term cohort studies: CHOP and ToMI.

Building on these existing cohorts, BiomarKid project expanded the research through additional metabolomics and proteomics analyses and aims to identify and validate biomarkers of dietary patterns, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep in children and adolescents, as well as their complex interactions from early infancy through youth.

BiomarKid project overview

Team

This project is carried out across the following institutions:

Partners

Collaborators

Results

  • Interactively explore results of association analyses between blood metabolite levels and clinical parameters, diet, and physical activity.

Publications

News

Latest updates from the project

An IISPV-CERCA and URV research team coordinates a European project that will identify key biomarkers for a better approach to childhood obesity

April 2026

The study will analyze the result of the interaction of aspects such as diet, environment or genetics, and its effects on children through metabolites, markers in blood and urine.
Data from more than 3,000 children of different ages and countries (in Spain these are patients of both the Hospital Universitari de Tarragona Joan XXIII and the Hospital Universitari Sant Joan de Reus) participating in this project will be collected on a web app. Thanks to its Artificial Intelligence based system, researchers and professionals in clinical practice will be able to interpret this information and make better decisions to improve patients’ treatment.

First face-to-face meeting of the BiomarKid project, which will allow the identification of key biomarkers for a better approach to childhood obesity

March 21, 2023

TThe IISPV office in Tarragona hosted the first face-to-face meeting of the BiomarKid project, which will identify key biomarkers for a better approach to childhood obesity. This meeting has been also attended by scientific experts in different areas such as metabolomics, diet and physical activity and innovation, as well as a representative of the IISPV spin-off Biosfer Telsab. The project will last 3 years.