The simgi® gastrointestinal digestion simulator applied to the study of the interactions between wine polyphenols and human intestinal microbiota

Resumen del trabajo presentado al Congreso Wine and Health, celebrado en Logroño (España) del 16 al 18 de febrero de 2017.Recent scientific evidence suggests that wine polyphenols exert their effects through interactions with the gut microbiota, as they seem to modulate microbiota and, at the same time, are metabolized by intestinal bacteria into specific bioavailable metabolites. Because of the higher cost and larger time required for the in vivo studies, in vitro digestions have been widely used for screening gut polyphenols metabolism and their impact on intestinal microbiota. Dynamic gastrointestinal simulator models take into account the dynamic physiological responses through the gastrointestinal tract, and the metabolic differences between areas of the large intestine, among other aspects. To date, there are still a limited number of these dynamic gastrointestinal digestion simulators, although their applications are promising. The simgi® is a computer-controlled multiple-compartment dynamic model, able to simulate continuous and simultaneously the physiological conditions of the human gastrointestinal tract (www.cial.uam-csic.es/simgi/). It includes the stomach compartment, the small intestine compartment and three-stage continuous reactors where the physiological conditions of ascending, transverse and descending colon regions are reproduced. Taking wine polyphenols as reference, our studies carried out so far have allowed the optimization of the simgi® operating parameters as well as the gastrointestinal digestion simulations of red wine and active grape-derived ingredients, alone or in combination with probiotics. Also, simgi® experiments have been accomplished to novel analytical techniques such as UPLC-ESI-MS/MS in order to assess degradation of wine polyphenols and formation of new microbial phenolic metabolites in the simgi® compartments simulating the different regions of the colon.Peer reviewe