INIMINI-health: Immune- and microbiota-competent intestine-on-a-chip to study health promoting nutrition and drugs

The INIMINI-health project brought together a consortium of leading knowledge institutes, technology suppliers, food, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical companies, and a health fund with the aim to establish a intestine-on-a-chip model with intestinal epithelial cells, immune cells, and live gut bacteria. The interaction between these three compartments is vital for gut health, and the model would enable scientists to study these interactions in the laboratory, and to study new health-promoting nutrients and drugs

In the project, human Caco-2 intestinal epithelial and THP-1 Lucia monocyte/macrophage cell lines were cultured together in a commercially available (Mimetas OrganoPlate) system to develop a system in which a large number of tests can be performed simultaneously. Due to technical challenges in the system, these cells could not be cultured in direct contact with each other, which was an original goal of the project. Additionally, live probiotic bacteria (Lactobacillus acidophilus W37) were successfully tested in the system in combination with Caco-2 and HT29-MTX mucus-producing intestinal epithelial cells. The need for oxygen in the system for the intestinal epithelial cells is a limitation for culturing live gut bacteria, many of which cannot withstand the presence of oxygen. More development is needed in the system to study more complex gut-bacteria and gut-bacteria-immune interactions.

The most innovative result of the INIMINI project is the application of water-soluble sensor molecules (from Agilent Technologies) that can be used to perform measurements of oxygen metabolism in cells. These measurements have not been previously applied in an intestine-on-a-chip system, and a scientific publication of these results, applied to Caco-2 and organoid-derived intestinal epithelial cells, is in preparation at the end of the project’s lifetime.