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.