Development of microphysiological human intestine models for deciphering the role of host-gut microbiome crosstalk in intestinal diseases

The human microbiome and its crosstalk with host cells play a critical role in regulating human health and disease. However, the underlying mechanism of how the host-microbiome crosstalk affects the disease etiology remains largely elusive, mainly because of a lack of reliable model systems. It has been demonstrated that the microphysiological human gut-on-a-chip system enables to stably co-culture the living human microbiome under the physiologically relevant tissue microarchitecture and biomechanical cues to recapitulate complex crosstalk in the epithelium-microbiome-immune axis in the intestinal microenvironment. By leveraging this innovative technology, the mechanistic investigation of epithelial morphogenesis, the establishment of a novel platform to co-culture anaerobic bacteria, the identification of the etiological trigger in the intestinal inflammation, and the development of patient-specific intestinal disease models by integrating patient’s samples have been performed. The development and utilization of the microphysiological human intestine models can potentially produce disseminating impacts to deciphering the host-microbiome crosstalk in gastrointestinal diseases