Development of a human primary gut-on-a-chip to model inflammatory processes

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a complex multi-factorial disease for which physiologically relevant in vitro models are lacking. Existing models are often a compromise between biological relevance and scalability. Here, we integrated intestinal epithelial cells (IEC) derived from human intestinal organoids with monocyte-derived macrophages, in a gut-on-a-chip platform to model the human intestine and key aspects of IBD. The microfluidic culture of IEC lead to an increased polarization and differentiation state that closely resembled the expression profile of human colon in vivo. Activation of the model resulted in the polarized secretion of CXCL10, IL-8 and CCL-20 by IEC and could efficiently be prevented by TPCA-1 exposure. Importantly, upregulated gene expression by the inflammatory trigger correlated with dysregulated pathways in IBD patients. Finally, integration of activated macrophages offers a first-step towards a multi-factorial amenable IBD platform that could be scaled up to assess compound efficacy at early stages of drug development or in personalized medicine.