Microphysiological systems for modeling gut-organ interaction

Abstract

The gut is a digestive organ that absorbs nutrients but also plays a vital role in immune response and defense against external compounds. The complex interaction between the gut microbiota and other organs including the immune system of the host has been known in various contexts, yielding the notion of 'axes' between the gut and other organs. While the presence of various gut-organ axes has been reported, the lack of adequate in vitro model systems for studying this interaction has restricted a deeper insight into these phenomena. Recently developed microphysiological systems (MPS), also known as organ-on-a-chip, allow researchers to study complex interactions between diverse organs, and here we provide a review of how recently developed gut-on-a-chip systems are used for building models of various diseases that were difficult to study.