Developing an Integrated Approach to Modelling Digestive Processes

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This research program is based on the common interests of faculty members to integrate nutrition, food biophysics, chemistry and microbiology approaches to digestion in order to improve human nutrition and food safety. The core team includes two recently recruited professors (G. LaPointe and M. Rogers) of the Department of Food Science and Dr. A. Wright (director, Human Nutraceutical Research Unit, Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences) who can provide transdisciplinary training for students using the requested equipment. This platform will enable the modelling of microbial-food interactions during digestion, with the ability to measure how changes in food nanostructure impact microbial presence and activity through genomics and metabolomics. This research will help develop new food ingredients, nutraceuticals and approaches to ensuring their stability in dairy products and other foods. The team will be able to study microbial adaptation and interactions with contaminating pathogens such as Salmonella enterica and Listeria monocytogenes. The equipment will be invaluable to study the genomic variation of food pathogens undergoing the stress of processing and digestion, which could contribute to hypervirulence, determining severity of foodborne disease outbreaks. No other Canadian program features the unique combination of expertise for studying the impact of digestion on food structure and molecular analysis of food pathogen adaptation to gut microbiota. This program will lead to comparative data and harmonised guidelines for conducting in vitro gut modelling, with improved decision-making processes for selection of the model that is most appropriate for the objective being pursued. The requested equipment is highly compatible and complementary to the dynamic simulated gastrointestinal system (TNO TIM1) that has been acquired through a recent CFI award to Dr. Rogers for simulating the upper gastrointestinal tract, without any microbiota. The TIM1 is located in a facility that is not biosafety level 2 and does not have the capability to model the gut microbiota. There is an urgent need at this time to validate the different approaches available for gastrointestinal modelling, both upper and lower components. The advantage of the ProDigest TWINSHIME is that it is a complete GI system modelling the stomach, small intestine and three colon compartments, over longer periods in the presence of microbiota. Rogers, LaPointe, and Wright will combine their expertise to validate specific models of static and dynamic simulated gastrointestinal systems, in order to provide guidelines for best practices in modelling digestion. This collaboration will lead to the design of new functional foods and provide evidence-based modulation of the gut microbiota through food components, for improved nutrition and food safety outcomes.