Microfluidic intestinal-chips as next-generation modeling strategies: Multifaceted emerging applications in food research, functional foods and personalized nutrition

Food digestion and absorption are essential functions of the human gut and the cornerstone of food research. This article has reviewed the core modeling strategies of intestinal-chips, and their application in the field of food science research, including precise evaluation of nutritional efficacy, food safety risk prediction, innovative development of functional foods and construction of personalized nutritional intervention strategies. Although microfluidic intestinal-chips have addressed some limitations inherent to traditional models, they still face technical challenges in fully replicating the intestinal microenvironment, as well as neural innervation, vascular perfusion and systemic immune responses. Currently, intestinal-chips are accelerating their integration with advanced technologies such as biomaterials, stem cell science, gene editing, 3-D bioprinting and artificial intelligence, to continuously enhance the physiological fidelity, support the optimization of food processing techniques and accelerate the development of new functional foods. These advancements of intestinal-chips won’t only substantially promote the industrialization of next-generation food innovations such as cell-cultured meat and synthetic biology foods, but also drive nutritional science research from group recommendations to individualized decision-making. This technology thus provides an indispensable in vitro experimental platform and transformation acceleration engine for achieving "precision nutrition targeting the gut".