Chicory – a functional food with multiple effects: cancer-prevention, antimicrobial resistance, glycemia and lipidemia regulation

We experimented on murine model and attempted to point several mechanisms by which the chicory roots acts as a functional food. To this goal, a nutrigenomic analysis was performed. Mice were fed with an aqueous decoction of the roots flour from two selected chicory genotypes (G12 and G35) and with an inulin (I2255 Sigma Aldrich, MO, USA) solution. The mice gavages consisted in a daily force-feeding of 500 µl of stemming solution decoctions of chicory flour or inulin water solution besides the standard chow. As experiments were conducted sequentially for two different periods of time, two control sets were used: first control group (Ctr1) in parallel with G12 and G35 diet and a second control group (Ctr2) in parallel with inulin diet. Three mice for each condition were sacrificed and the central core of the liver left lobe was cubed and frozen at -80 °C for transcriptomics.