Gut bioengineered models to study host-microbiota-probiotics interactions

The gastrointestinal tract is the major ecological niche in which gut microbes interact with epithelial and immune cells to maintain homeostasis in mammals. Moreover, probiotics modulate the gut microbiota and exert various health benefits after oral administration and persistence in the gut. Until now, animal models have been the gold standard for unravelling the mechanisms implicated in host-microbe interactions. However, their translational relevance to clinical trials and the associated ethical concerns underscore the need for alternative models. The emergence of microfluidic organ-on-chip technologies provides promising new alternative models to explore human host-microbe interactions while maintaining the tissue-level complexity and inter-individual variability. In this perspective, we discuss the potential of using mice, non-rodent models and gut-on-chip technologies to better characterize the interactions between the host, the gut microbiota, and orally administered probiotics, and to monitor microbial spatiotemporal dynamics at the tissue level.