The human colon is a remarkable organ, playing critical roles in drug uptake and metabolism as well as harboring the 100 trillion microbial cells of the microbiome, which itself has multiple impacts on human health. For these reasons, there is a widespread need in academia and the biotechnology marketplace for in vitro studies of human colon physiology and the interaction between colon tissue and the anaerobic bacteria of the microbiome. To meet this need, Altis Biosystems LLC, an early stage biotechnology company, will collaborate with scientists at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill to develop a new technology for cell culture to co-culture normal, human colonic epithelial cells with anaerobic microbiota. The platform will be designed with the eventual goal during Phase II of creating systems for unique high- content assays of cellular activity at the interface of the human colonic epithelium and microbiome. In this Phase I SBIR, this collaboration will design, prototype and test the Self- sustaining Intestinal Microbiome Platform (SIMPle). The goal is to expand the use of this technology to the large community in the life science market. The collaboration represents an ideal opportunity for the translation of an academic technology to the marketplace through the NIH sponsored SBIR program. We will prototype user-friendly SIMPle cassettes capable of maintaining a steep oxygen gradient between luminal and basal reservoirs and establish protocols long-term co-culture of aerobic epithelial cells with anaerobic microbiota.
The novel SIMPle platform will have broad applications in various health and scientific related areas of gastrointestinal research and in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The technology will create a living, functional model of the human colon, enabling unique studies of the colon and its interplay with the microbiome, pre- and probiotics and drugs.
