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By combining microfluidic technology with tissue engineering, Creative Biolabs now provides in vitro intestine-on-a-chip model to help you better explore the physiology and pathology of the gut and develop more personalized research strategies.
The intestinal epithelium is one of the most frequently renewed tissues in humans. The small intestinal epithelium consists of a typical crypt-villus shaft and is covered by a single layer of enterocytes. The intestinal epithelial region contains more than 90% absorptive cells, with the remainder consisting of goblet cells, tuft cells, Paneth cells, and enteroendocrine cells, which regulate metabolism, control appetite, manage intestinal motility, and coordinate mucosal immunity. In addition, the gut is also a major site of interactions between the intestinal epithelium, commensal microbiota, immune cells, and vascular endothelial cells, whose complex and dynamic interactions cannot be ignored in in vitro modeling. Therefore, it is crucial to integrate vascular endothelial cells into intestinal models to improve the accuracy of in vitro studies.
Fig 1. Microenvironment and cellular component of the human gut. (Li, 2021)
By implanting the intestinal epithelial cell line into the chip model, we launched a simple but practical transwell chip. By using engineering models to complement the deficiencies of biological technology, we provide a new method for simulating the anatomy, mechanics and biological characteristics of the human intestinal tract. In addition, we also introduced a parallel microchannel chip separated by a PDMS porous membrane. This simplified model simulates the physiological structure of the living human intestine in the presence of intestinal epithelial cells and vascular endothelial cells/immune cells. Porous membranes also separate commensal microorganisms from intestinal cell lines, enabling long-term and stable co-culture. Our chips are capable of exploring functions such as intestinal digestion, barrier integrity, immune regulation, and drug metabolism, and host-microbe crosstalk can also be simulated under co-culture conditions with the microbiome.
Fig 2. A two-channel intestine-on-a-chip model is the most practical chip design. (Xiang, 2020)
The composition of the intestinal epithelial cell lineage, intestinal vascular barrier, host-microbial symbiosis, mucosal immunity, and continuous mechanical stimulation are all key factors in the physiological and pathological conditions of the intestinal tract. These features are critical for modeling the living human gut on a chip, and these complex interactions make it difficult to stimulate all of them using a single structural design. More complex customized microfluidic intestinal models can reproduce physiologically relevant fluid flow and peristaltic-like mechanical deformation in vitro while satisfying cell growth, coexistence and interaction. Through the unique structural design, the microfluidic chip can also control and evaluate the intraluminal hypoxic gradient in the chip, allowing long-term stable co-culture of human gut microbiota.
Fig 3. Chip designs with custom structures can achieve more diverse experimental needs. (Bein, 2018)
Compared with commonly used in vitro culture systems, microfluidic intestinal chips can simulate the structure, function, physiological and pathological characteristics of living bodies more similarly, and provide precise and independent control for multiple biological, molecular, cellular, and mechanical parameters. Our simplified but practical intestine-on-a-chip model can accurately reproduce the physiological structure of the human gut, greatly reducing experimental time and cost, and enabling high-throughput and rapid drug research and co-culture experiments. The customized advanced intestinal chip will provide a powerful new method for the research of intestinal diseases and the construction of in vitro models. No matter what kind of testing you need, Creative Biolabs’ well-trained R&D team will provide you with a reasonable design or a suitable intestine-on-a-chip model, so don’t hesitate to contact us for more information.
References
For Research Use Only. Not For Clinical Use.
