The NOG Lab has been awarded a competitive National Research Programme for Universities (NRPU) grant by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan to investigate gut microbiome alterations in malnourished children in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The two-year project will recruit 200 children aged 6–24 months across urban and rural settings in Peshawar. Using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and shotgun metagenomics, the team will characterise microbial community shifts associated with stunting, wasting, and underweight status.
Principal Investigator Professor Qasim Khan expressed gratitude to HEC for supporting this work, noting that the findings will help identify microbiome-based biomarkers to guide early nutritional interventions.