Nestlé Partnership Advances Research in Healthy Ageing and Women’s Health
Nestlé and NTU Singapore have announced a multi-year strategic research partnership aimed at advancing scientific understanding of how nutrition influences healthy ageing and women’s health.
The collaboration brings together Nestlé’s global research expertise, including capabilities from its Singapore R&D centre, with NTU Singapore’s strong scientific talent and advanced research infrastructure. Together, both institutions aim to deepen knowledge of how diet, nutrition, and lifestyle choices affect biological processes linked to ageing.
A key focus of the partnership is exploring how targeted nutrition may help slow biological ageing and improve health outcomes related to metabolic health, mobility, sleep, and menopause. The research will also examine ways to support women’s health across different life stages. To enable this work, NTU and Nestlé plan to establish a joint research laboratory in Singapore equipped with shared facilities for data analysis and clinical studies.
Ryan Carvalho, Head of Nestlé Research, said nutrition plays a critical role in supporting long-term health as people age. He noted that the collaboration will strengthen scientific evidence on healthy longevity and help develop evidence-based nutritional solutions tailored to midlife and beyond, including menopause-related health needs.
The partnership will be led on NTU’s side by researchers from the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine). It will also leverage data from the Health for Life in Singapore (HELIOS) Study, a large national population cohort involving around 50,000 adults. This dataset, developed in collaboration with NHG Health and Imperial College London, provides extensive insights into environmental, lifestyle, and biological factors affecting health.
Professor Christian Wolfrum, Deputy President and Provost of NTU Singapore, said the initiative reflects the university’s commitment to translating scientific research into real-world health solutions through industry collaboration. He highlighted that combining HELIOS data with Nestlé’s nutrition science expertise will help generate evidence-based approaches to support healthy ageing across Singapore, Asia, and beyond.
The initiative is supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), which emphasized its role in strengthening Singapore’s research ecosystem and enabling opportunities in healthy ageing innovation.
With the global population aged 60 and above expected to reach 1.4 billion by 2030, the partnership addresses an urgent global challenge. While life expectancy is increasing, many people are spending more years in poor health, creating a widening “healthspan gap.” The collaboration aims to generate scientific insights that can help close this gap and support longer, healthier lives through improved nutrition and lifestyle strategies.
