Motoring on: UCC gut-health expert looks forward to new challenges

Motoring on: UCC gut-health expert looks forward to new challenges Professor Ted Dinan, UCC, with his Honda CBF 1000cc motorbike, outside the Biosciences Building, UCC, Cork. Picture: Jim Coughlan. As he prepares to leave UCC, Prof Ted Dinan recalls the early-morning moment he coined the word psychobiotics, a term describing how bacteria in the stomach can influence our mood, writes Helen O’Callaghan TED Dinan was due to give an 8am lecture at a symposium in Dublin. It was a Sunday in 2012 and he wished he could be anywhere else. But in those moments of musing on what else he could have been doing, a word flashed into his mind. The word was ‘psychobiotic’ — Dinan had just coined a term to describe mood-improving microbes or bacteria. Professor of psychiatry and a principal investigator in the APC Microbiome Institute at UCC, Dinan will retire from academic medicine this autumn. He was previously chair of Clinical Neurosciences and professor of Psychological Medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. His 16-year stint at UCC has been his longest job. “I’ve never stayed anywhere very long. It’s important to move out of your comfort zone intermittently. I’ve stayed here because it’s been very productive and I enjoy the people I work with.” Chief among these is John Cryan, professor and chair of the Department of Anatomy and Neurosciences at UCC and also a principal investigator at APC Microbiome, a leading-edge institute researching the role of microbiome in health and disease. “The primary focus of research in our labs — the core of what we do — is how microbes in the gut influence the brain and influence behaviour,” says Dinan. “Ten years ago we weren’t aware that gut microbiota [community of microbes living in our gut] is part of our stress system. Now […]

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