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Updated: Oct 29, 2025
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Published on: July 31, 2019
In vitro models of gut digestion across childhood: current developments, challenges and future trends
Elora Fournier1, Charlène Roussel2, Alessandra Dominicis3
1Université Clermont Auvergne, INRAE, UMR 454 MEDIS, Microbiologie Environnement Digestif et Santé, CRNH Auvergne, 63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France; Toxalim, Research Centre in Food Toxicology, INRAE, ENVT, INP-Purpan, UPS, Université de Toulouse, 31000 Toulouse, France.
Insights
This review examines the developing child gut from birth to three years, focusing on physiological changes and in vitro models. It highlights applications in nutrition and pharmaceuticals, addressing research limitations.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Gastroenterology
- Microbiome Research
- In Vitro Modeling
Background:
- Childhood involves significant digestive tract development, including anatomical, physiological, and microbial changes.
- Environmental factors like diet, drugs (antibiotics), and infections impact pediatric gut maturation.
- Ethical and technical constraints increasingly favor in vitro over in vivo studies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review the evolution of child gut physiology (birth to 3 years) concerning physicochemical, mechanical, and microbial factors.
- To describe existing in vitro models of the pediatric digestive tract, from simple to complex systems.
- To discuss applications, limitations, and future challenges of child gut models.
Main Methods:
- Literature review of pediatric gut development.
- Analysis of various in vitro digestive tract models (static, dynamic, multi-compartmental).
- Synthesis of model applications in nutrition, pharmaceuticals, and microbiology.
Main Results:
- Detailed understanding of pediatric gut maturation parameters (physicochemical, mechanical, microbial).
- Categorization of in vitro models based on complexity and mimicked digestive regions.
- Identified key applications and limitations of current child gut models.
Conclusions:
- In vitro models are crucial for studying pediatric digestion due to in vivo study restrictions.
- Diverse in vitro models exist, offering valuable tools for research in nutrition, pharmaceuticals, and microbiology.
- Further development is needed to overcome limitations and enhance the predictive power of child gut models.
Abstract:
The human digestion is a multi-step and multi-compartment process essential for human health, at the heart of many issues raised by academics, the medical world and industrials from the food, nutrition and pharma fields. In the first years of life, major dietary changes occur and are concomitant with an evolution of the whole child digestive tract anatomy and physiology, including colonization of gut microbiota. All these phenomena are influenced by child exposure to environmental compounds, such as drugs (especially antibiotics) and food pollutants, but also childhood infections. Due to obvious ethical, regulatory and technical limitations, in vivo approaches in animal and human are more and more restricted to favor complementary in vitro approaches. This review summarizes current knowledge on the evolution of child gut physiology from birth to 3 years old regarding physicochemical, mechanical and microbial parameters. Then, all the available in vitro models of the child digestive tract are described, ranging from the simplest static mono-compartmental systems to the most sophisticated dynamic and multi-compartmental models, and mimicking from the oral phase to the colon compartment. Lastly, we detail the main applications of child gut models in nutritional, pharmaceutical and microbiological studies and discuss the limitations and challenges facing this field of research.
