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 absortion 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 own mother cells of the patient 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 a intestinal coating on a controlled environment, where this coating can interact with immunitary cells, blood cells and drugs and 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 intestine. 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 on the intestine. This absortion simulation would open us the market of the food industry that need an efficient way to test the behavior of different compounds that can be found in food.
