From animal models to gut-on-chip: the challenging journey to capture inter-individual variability in chronic digestive disorders

Abstract

ABSTRACT Chronic digestive disorders are of increasing incidence worldwide with expensive treatments and no available cure. Available therapeutic schemes mainly rely on symptom relief, with large degrees of variability in patients’ response to such treatments, underlining the need for new therapeutic strategies. There are strong indications that the gut microbiota’s contribution seems to be a key modulator of disease activity and patients’ treatment responses. Hence, efforts have been devoted to understanding host–microbe interactions and the mechanisms underpinning such variability. Animal models, being the gold standard, provide valuable mechanistic insights into host–microbe interactions. However, they are not exempt from limitations prompting the development of alternative methods. Emerging microfluidic technologies and gut-on-chip models were shown to mirror the main features of gut physiology and disease state, reflect microbiota modification, and include functional readouts for studying host responses. In this commentary, we discuss the relevance of animal models in understanding host–microbe interactions and how gut-on-chip technology holds promises for addressing patient variability in responses to chronic digestive disease treatment.