A multi-module, microfluidic gastrointestinal tract for testing food and drugs

This work describes our efforts to date to realize a miniaturized gastrointestinal (GI) tract total analysis system (gut-µTAS) for nutrients or drugs upon ingestion. A multi-module flow system is being developed that seeks to combine all processes of the GI tract, including enzymatic digestion, absorption, and metabolism together with online mass spectrometry analysis. When exposing cells to digested materials (chyme), we found that the cells...