Recording Gut Dysfunction with Bacterial Sentinels

Scott Jordan Kerns of Harvard Medical School in the U.S. will develop a cell-based model of environmental enteric dysfunction, which causes substantial morbidity and mortality in developing countries. As a living model of the human intestine, he will use a gut-on-a-chip device composed of two microfluidic channels enclosing gut cells growing on a flexible membrane, which is coated with extracellular matrix proteins and other cell types. He will treat the gut-on-a-chip with factors that cause environmental enteric dysfunction, such as pathogenic bacteria, and monitor gut-related functions including nutrient absorption. A validated model could then be used to screen for new treatments. He will also engineer non-pathogenic bacteria as potential early-stage diagnostics and test their ability to sense environmental enteric dysfunction in his model.