Prediction of microbial metabolism of phytochemicals using an in vitro colon model

Human colon contains 1.5kg of microbiota, which actively takes part in the degradation and decomposition of the non-absorbable intake. Colonic microbiota changes by age, diet, intestinal diseases and medication causing intra-individual variation in the metabolite pool in addition to the inter-individual variation between subjects. However, a good correlation has been found for dietary phenolic microbial metabolites between the in vitro colon model¹ and corresponding metabolite profiles from human body fluids. Traditional prediction of drug metabolism includes several in vitro test systems and animal trials. However, microbial metabolism in the colon is not generally used in the pre-clinical stage. To address these challenges, the developed batch in vitro colon mode can be coupled with an advanced metabolomics and bioinformatics platform that provide complementary pre-clinical data on the metabolites circulating in the human body.

The model can be used for:

Identification of toxic metabolites of new phytochemicals

Comparison of metabolite profiles of phytochemicals

Comparison of the microbial metabolite profile with those from body fluids of man: in vitro-in vivo correlation

Reference: 1. Aura A.M. et al. (2002), J. Agric.Food Chem. 50: 1725–1730.