The Phenol-Explorer database, release 1.0, on polyphenol contents in foods, was developed at INRA, Unité de Nutrition Humaine (Centre de Recherche de Clermont-Ferrand, France) in collaboration with CIQUAL-AFSSA (Maisons-Alfort, France), the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada) and Insiliflo (Edmonton, Canada).
The development of Phenol-Explorer 1.0 was supported by INRA, the NUTRIALIS program of the French Ministry of Research (2002-2004) and by Unilever, Danone and Nestlé (2005-2009).
Phenol-Explorer 1.0 was released in August 2009.
The Phenol-Explorer database, release 2.0, on polyphenol metabolism in humans and experimental animals, was developed at INRA, Unite de Nutrition Humaine, in collaboration with the University of Barcelona,
Development of Phenol-Explorer 2.0 was supported by INRA, Danone and the University of Barcelona.
Phenol-Explorer 2.0 was released in September 2011.
The following persons contributed to the Phenol-Explorer project:
Augustin SCALBERT (INRA) coordinated the project.
Vanessa NEVEU, Femke VOS, Jara PEREZ-JIMENEZ and Vanessa CRESPY (INRA) compiled and evaluated over 60,000 original data on the polyphenol contents of foods from the scientific literature. Laure DU CHAFFAUT (CIQUAL-AFSSA) developed the initial structure of the database, together with the partners of the NUTRIALIS project ‘Constitution d'une base de données et d’une table de composition alimentaire nationale sur les polyphénols’ and provided her expertise on food composition tables.
Vanessa NEVEU (left) and Femke VOS (right)
Vanessa NEVEU developed the methods for data aggregation to produce the mean content values for polyphenol contents and defined the specifications for the web interface (release 1.0).
Vanessa NEVEU, Femke VOS and Jara PEREZ-JIMENEZ wrote the reports on the variability of polyphenol content in the different categories of foods.
Joseph ROTHWELL (INRA) and Mireia URPI-SARDA (University of Barcelona) developed the structure of the database for curation of the data on polyphenol metabolism (Phenol-Explorer 2.0)
Cristina ANDRES-LACUEVA and Mireia URPI-SARDA supervised the work at the University of Barcelona, Group of Biomarkers and Nutritional & Food Metabolomics. Mireia URPI-SARDA and Maria BOTO-ORDOÑEZ (University of Barcelona) searched, compiled and evaluated the over 10,000 original data on polyphenol metabolism from the scientific literature. Data were summarized in tables in a format suitable for export into the Access Phenol-Explorer database. Rafael LLORACH and Cristina ANDRES-LACUEVA (University of Barcelona) provided their expertise on polyphenol metabolism and the analysis of polyphenol metabolites in biological samples.
From left to right: Mireia URPI-SARDA, Rafael LLORACH, Cristina ANDRES-LACUEVA, Maria BOTO-ORDOÑEZ and Joe ROTHWELL
Joseph ROTHWELL transferred data on polyphenol metabolism to a Microsoft Access database and defined the specifications for the web interface (release 2.0).
Craig KNOX, Roman EISNER and Joseph CRUZ (University of Alberta and In Siliflo, Edmonton, Canada) developed the web interface of Phenol-Explorer, releases 1.0 and 2.0.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to Louise MENNEN (UMR INSERM unit 557/INRA unit 1125/CNAM, Centre de Recherche en Nutrition Humaine, Paris, France) who first expressed the idea to develop such a database for epidemiological studies. She coordinated the NUTRIALIS project ‘Constitution d'une base de données et d’une table de composition alimentaire nationale sur les polyphénols’ from 2002 to 2004.
The authors are also grateful to the European Network of Excellence EuroFIR and to Jayne IRELAND (CIQUAL-AFSSA) for training the compilers and for helpful discussion and suggestions.