Nutritional deficiency in an intestine-on-a-chip recapitulates injury hallmarks associated with environmental enteric dysfunction

Environmental enteric dysfunction (EED) is a chronic intestinal inflammatory condition causing villus blunting, impaired barrier function, and reduced nutrient absorption. This study demonstrates that key EED features can be recreated in a human intestine-on-a-chip model using organoid-derived intestinal epithelial cells from EED patients and cultured in a nutrient-deficient medium lacking niacinamide and tryptophan. Nutritional deficiency in the organ chip led to changes in gene expression mirroring those seen in EED patients, including villus blunting, barrier dysfunction, and impaired nutrient uptake. The model may help analyze EED's molecular and nutritional bases and test potential therapeutics.

Amir Bein, Cicely W. Fadel, Ben Swenor, Wuji Cao, Rani K. Powers, Diogo M. Camacho, Arash Naziripour, Andrew Parsons, Nina LoGrande, Sanjay Sharma, Seongmin Kim, Sasan Jalili-Firoozinezhad, Jennifer Grant, David T. Breault, Junaid Iqbal, Asad Ali, Lee A. Denson, Sean R. Moore, Rachelle Prantil-Baun, Girija Goyal, Donald E. Ingber