The systems simulate, with high reproducibility, the conditions that occur in the different compartments of the gastrointestinal tracts and are promising to accurately mimic the digestive process, with the possibility to evaluate bioaccessibility and bioavailability. Moreover, the systems permit to study the synergic and reciprocal effects between the bioactive compounds characteristic of food and intestinal microbiota. This platform provide support to innovative studies on the potentially positive effects of foods on health, beyond and in particular to investigate the mechanisms underlying the linkage between foods and human health. In this contest, the mission of the platform is:
• the identification and characterization of food matrix and its nutraceutical compounds;
• the use of multi-compartment dynamic digestion systems simulating the different compartments of the gut, to mimic the digestive process and evaluate nutrient bioaccessibility, coupled with intestinal cell lines for the bioavailability evaluation of the nutrients.
• the study of gut microbiota to understand the complex food/microbiome interactions and as promising target for clinical interventions.
The use of a dynamic multi-compartment gastric model offers the possibility to simulate both the biochemical and mechanical aspects of human gastric digestion in a realistic time-dependent manner. The platform is suitable for mechanistic studies and hypothesis building due its controlled conditions, reproducibility and ease of sampling at the site of interest. Its integration with a metagenomic and metabolomic platform provides an avenue to interrogate the complex interplay of food matrix/gut microbiota in terms of analysis of microbial population dynamic and of metabolic output of such complex biological system. This technology will not be limited to the users directly working in the food and nutrition areas, but will also from the medical and pharmaceutical sectors, where there is a growing interest on the role of nutrition in diseases and on the interaction of the diet with specific medical treatments. At the same time, this technology will be in support of policy decisions to Develop national food-based dietary guidelines that define context-specific Sustainable Healthy Diets by taking into account the social, cultural, economic, ecological and environmental circumstances associated to the high incidence of diet-related diseases.