CO-CULTURE CASSETTE FOR ANAEROBES AND PRIMARY HUMAN INTESTINAL EPITHELIUM

The human colon is a remarkable organ, playing critical roles in drug uptake and metabolism aswell as harboring the 100 trillion microbial cells of the microbiome, which itself has multipleimpacts on human health. For these reasons, there is a widespread need in academia and thebiotechnology marketplace for in vitro studies of human colon physiology and the interactionbetween colon tissue and the anaerobic bacteria of the microbiome. To meet this need, AltisBiosystems LLC, an early stage biotechnology company, will collaborate with scientists at theUniversity of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill to develop a new technology for cell cultureto co-culture normal, human colonic epithelial cells with anaerobic microbiota. The platformwill 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 andmicrobiome. 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 thistechnology to the large community in the life science market. The collaboration represents anideal opportunity for the translation of an academic technology to the marketplace through theNIH sponsored SBIR program. We will prototype user-friendly SIMPle cassettes capable ofmaintaining a steep oxygen gradient between luminal and basal reservoirs and establishprotocols long-term co-culture of aerobic epithelial cells with anaerobic microbiota.