Organ-on-a-chip models try to reproduce some applications of a human organ in a lab. One of the most interesting activities for the food industry would be the simulation of the absorption of the intestine (Gut-on-a-Chip). The development of this approach would change the way to treat patients with some diseases such as Crohn’s disease or syndrome of the irritable intestine.
Instead of using pharmacological treatments that can be inefficient and with secondary effects, scientists could use patient’s stem cells to generate a duplicate of the intestine coating on a chip, having the possibility to analyze different drugs on it. This Gut-on-a-Chip would allow biomedical scientists to study the performance of an intestinal coating in a controlled environment, where this coating can interact with immune cells, blood cells and drugs without any invasive surgery.
Gut-on-a-Chip tries to be a “home in a lab” for human cells and gives them the appropriate environment and biological stimuli that they need to behave as they do in the human body. This recreation includes the intestinal epithelium, a layer of cells that forms the coating of the small and large intestines. Flow passes through the microchannels of these chips, recreating three-dimensional structures similar to the hairiness that can be found in the intestine.
Beonchip has already a prototype of this Gut-on-a-Chip and we are in the validation process trying to use the different cell types that can be found in the intestine. This absorption simulation would open us to the market of the food industry that needs an efficient way to test the behavior of different compounds that can be found in food.
