dsm-firmenich awards 2026 Nutrition Research Grant to five projects investigating the role of nutrients and bio-actives in supporting healthy longevity in Asia Pacific

Record number of grant applications reflect growing interest in the emerging issue of healthy aging in Asia Pacific, where one in four people will be over 60 by 2050^[1].

SINGAPORE, July 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- dsm-firmenich, innovators in nutrition, health, and beauty, today awarded the second round of the Nutrition Research Grant to five projects, each worth EUR50,000, in support of healthy longevity research in the Asia Pacific demographic.

Following the inaugural round in 2024 which focused on 'Health from the Gut across the Human Lifespan', this year's grant call centered around the theme 'Age Slower, Age Better - Nutrition Solutions for Healthy Longevity'.

"The study of healthy longevity is particularly important in the Asia Pacific region, where populations are aging at an unprecedented pace due to longer life expectancy." said Tina Low, Senior Vice President APAC, Health, Nutrition & Care (HNC), dsm-firmenich. "More worryingly, we see a widening gap between life span – how long we live - and health span – how long we remain healthy, with the average person spending the last 10 years of their lives in ill health.^[2]"

Tina added, "Advancing healthy longevity in Asia requires strong public-private partnerships, a principle embedded in dsm-firmenich's Asia-for-Asia Nutrition Research Grant Program."

The impact of Nutrition on Aging

"Today, we know it's possible to slow down the progression of aging with nutritional interventions." said Anneleen Spooren, Senior Vice President, Innovation, R&D & Regulatory, HNC, dsm-firmenich, citing the landmark DO-HEALTH study, Europe's largest clinical trial on healthy aging to date which demonstrated that a combination of algal omega-3, vitamin D and a simple home exercise program can slow biological aging by as much as 3.8 months in a 3-year period^[3].

"We were excited to receive a record number of applications for the grant this round, from 13 different countries in Asia Pacific, and we look forward to partnering with our grant recipients to gain more clarity on how nutrition can shape how aging unfolds, allowing us to live our later years in full vitality."

The five 2026 dsm-firmenich Nutrition Research Grant recipients are:

Dr. David Barry, National Ageing Research Institute, Australia
Effect of Postbiotic Supplementation on Inflammation and Physical Function in Pre-Frail Community-Dwelling Older Adults: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial

Prof. Hamid Sohrabi, Murdoch University, Australia
Synergistic Effects of Polyphenol- and Omega-3–Rich Dietary Patterns on Mitochondrial Health and Biological Ageing: Translational Insights from the AU-ARROW Cohort

Dr. Jiyun Ahn, Korea Food Research Institute, Republic of Korea
Healthspan Signals in Muscle: Tissue-Resolved Aging Clocks and Vitamin D Associations in Older Adults

Prof. Katherine Black, University of Otago, New Zealand
Omega-3 Supplementation to Support Lean Mass, Body Composition, and Healthy Longevity in Perimenopausal Women: A Randomised Control Trial

Asst. Prof. Vincenzo Sorrentino, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Promoting Cellular Energy Production for Slower Aging Combining Trigonelline and CoQ10

In addition to funding, the grant also offers valuable opportunities for professional recognition and networking with the broader nutrition and scientific community. The grants were presented at the 'Age Slower, Age Better: Advancing Healthy Longevity Across Asia Pacific' scientific symposium today, organized in partnership with A*STAR Institute for Human Development and Potential (IHDP), Singapore.

The symposium attracted over 180 academia and industry partners, including Prof. Johan Eriksson, Executive Director of A*STAR IHDP, and Prof. Kim Ji-Yeon of Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Korea, who served on the expert selection panel of the Nutrition Research Grant this year, and also delivered keynote presentations.

[1] UNFPA Asia-Pacific – Ageing: https://asiapacific.unfpa.org/en/topics/ageing

[2] Garmany A, Terzic A. Global Healthspan-Lifespan Gaps Among 183 World Health Organization Member States. JAMA Network Open. 2024;7(12):e2450241. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.50241.

[3] Bischoff-Ferrari HA, Gängler S, Wieczorek M, et al. Individual and additive effects of vitamin D, omega-3 and exercise on DNA methylation clocks of biological aging in older adults from the DO-HEALTH trial. Nature Aging. 2025;5(3):376–385. doi:10.1038/s43587-024-00793-y

^[1] UNFPA Asia-Pacific – Ageing: https://asiapacific.unfpa.org/en/topics/ageing 

^[2] Garmany A, Terzic A. Global Healthspan-Lifespan Gaps Among 183 World Health Organization Member States. JAMA Network Open. 2024;7(12):e2450241. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.50241.

^[3] Bischoff-Ferrari HA, Gängler S, Wieczorek M, et al. Individual and additive effects of vitamin D, omega-3 and exercise on DNA methylation clocks of biological aging in older adults from the DO-HEALTH trial. Nature Aging. 2025;5(3):376–385. doi:10.1038/s43587-024-00793-y

About dsm-firmenich

As innovators in nutrition, health, and beauty, dsm-firmenich reinvents, manufactures, and combines vital nutrients, flavors, and fragrances for the world's growing population to thrive. With our comprehensive range of solutions, with natural and renewable ingredients and renowned science and technology capabilities, we work to create what is essential for life, desirable for consumers, and more sustainable for people and the planet. dsm-firmenich is a Swiss company, listed on the Euronext Amsterdam and SIX Swiss Exchange, with operations in almost 60 countries and revenues of more than €9 billion for its Continuing Operations following the divestment of Animal Nutrition & Health. With a diverse, worldwide team of nearly 21,000 employees, we bring progress to life every day, everywhere, for billions of people.  www.dsm-firmenich.com  

About Nutrition Research Grant

The Nutrition Research Grant was established to support innovative, high-quality research that advances knowledge in the field of nutrition and its impact on human health in the Asia Pacific region. It is designed to encourage researchers, academics, and healthcare professionals explore new ideas, develop evidence-based solutions, and contribute meaningful insights that improve dietary practices, clinical outcomes, and public health strategies in the Asia Pacific population. The initiative places strong emphasis on research that addresses current and emerging challenges in nutrition, and the role of nutrition in overall health and wellbeing. Beyond supporting individual research projects, the grant aims to bridge the gap between scientific discovery and real-world application. By prioritizing studies with clear practical relevance, it ensures that findings can be translated into actionable recommendations for healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the wider community.

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dsm-firmenich awards 2026 Nutrition Research Grant to five projects investigating the role of nutrients and bio-actives in supporting healthy longevity in Asia Pacific

APIA, Samoa, Aug. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- HTX Research, the dedicated research arm of HTX, has released a new report titled The Industrialization of Intelligence and the Bubble Cycle: Token Economics, Capital Expenditure, and the Repricing of Risk-Reward Across U.S. AI Equities. Its central argument is that the AI industry and AI equities are not at the same point in their respective cycles — technological diffusion remains in its early stages while capital expenditure, valuations, and investor sentiment have moved well ahead of it.

The Variables Driving Equity Prices

Markets first priced the scarcity of GPUs, high-bandwidth memory, servers, and data-center capacity, and later the capability gains delivered by frontier models and coding agents. In 2026, the variables driving equity returns are shifting away from model parameter counts and the scale of capital expenditure toward token production costs, task-completion reliability, usage intensity, enterprise-workflow penetration, and the ability of enormous AI investments to generate durable free cash flow.

Behind that shift is a change in the magnitude of capital spending. J.P. Morgan Asset Management estimates that five U.S. hyperscalers will spend approximately $697 billion in 2026, with capital expenditure rising from roughly 33% of their operating cash flow in 2023 to an estimated 93%. Once capital expenditure consumes the overwhelming majority of operating cash flow, market attention necessarily moves from revenue growth to return on capital.

The Bubble Sits in the Financial Architecture, Not the Industry

Cloud revenue, coding-agent adoption, semiconductor sales, and enterprise demand are all growing in real terms, meaning AI technology itself is not a false narrative. Capital expenditure, external financing, data-center projects, private-model valuations, and a number of high-multiple second-tier equities, however, display increasingly speculative characteristics.

Headline price-to-earnings ratios also fail to represent true valuation levels: Alphabet's multiple is distorted by investment income, and Amazon's current accounting profit does not reflect a normalized valuation. What genuinely offers value is the closest alignment among normalized valuation, competitive moats, cash flow, and AI optionality.

At current prices and cycle positions, the report views Alphabet as offering the most compelling overall asymmetry, and applies the same framework across Microsoft, Meta, TSMC, NVIDIA, Amazon, Oracle, Micron, AMD, Arista, and Vertiv — distinguishing businesses with high fundamental win rates from those whose valuations already demand near-flawless execution.

AI Is Reshaping How Crypto Investors Allocate Capital

AI's role as a shared theme across global capital markets extends beyond U.S. equity pricing into the allocation behavior of crypto investors. As names including NVIDIA, Micron, TSMC, Broadcom, Meta, and Alphabet enter the everyday portfolios of crypto users alongside gold, crude oil, ETFs, and pre-IPO assets, a growing share of users now treat crypto and U.S. equities as different allocation directions within a single global risk-asset system.

HTX has been one of the earliest crypto exchanges to systematically pursue this direction. According to data disclosed in August 2026, cumulative trading volume in the platform's TradFi perpetuals section has exceeded $2.5 billion, with support for more than 170 TradFi-related assets spanning U.S. equities, ETFs, gold, silver, crude oil, AI semiconductors, memory, aerospace, and pre-IPO themes such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

What makes this model work is the platform's existing base of crypto users who have completed registration, verification, and funding. Holding stablecoins such as USDT, they can trade TradFi assets within the same account without opening a brokerage account or moving capital into a separate financial system — allocating toward gold, ETFs, or large-cap technology when risk appetite declines, and raising crypto and high-beta AI exposure when it recovers.

The Competitive Boundary for Trading Platforms Is Shifting

Competition among trading platforms will extend beyond spot markets, derivatives, liquidity, and listing speed toward a broader contest spanning multi-asset access, wealth management, and AI investment tools. Platforms with durable competitiveness will see their core capability evolve from execution alone toward global asset distribution.

This confirms a larger judgment in the report: AI is changing not only model capability and compute demand, but capital flows, allocation behavior, and how financial products are organized. HTX's early positioning in TradFi corresponds with HTX Research's sustained tracking of the AI theme and cross-market capital flows — identifying cycle positions, reading capital flows, and understanding how assets move in relation to one another sits at the core of research work, and also forms a source of first-mover advantage in business decisions. As AI drives global markets into a new phase of convergence, institutions capable of understanding both industrial cycles and capital flows are better positioned for the next round of competition.

*The above content is not an investment advice and does not constitute any offer or solicitation to offer or recommendation of any investment product.

*The above content is not an investment advice and does not constitute any offer or solicitation to offer or recommendation of any investment product.

About HTX Research

HTX Research is the dedicated research arm of HTX Group, responsible for conducting in-depth analyses, producing comprehensive reports, and delivering expert evaluations across a broad spectrum of topics, including cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and emerging market trends. Committed to providing data-driven insights and strategic foresight, HTX Research plays a pivotal role in shaping industry perspectives and supporting informed decision-making within the digital asset space. Through rigorous research methodologies and cutting-edge analytics, HTX Research remains at the forefront of innovation, driving thought leadership and fostering a deeper understanding of evolving market dynamics. Visit us.

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HTX Research Examines U.S. AI Equities: Technology Remains Early, While Capital Expenditure and Valuations Have Entered the Late Cycle