Project Title: Research of extracellular vesicle content from gut microbiome and its’ role in cancer development by applying gut on chip system.

Project No: lzp-2020/2-0380

Period: 1 December 2020 – 31 December 2021

Project costs: 100 389.00 EUR

Principle Investigator: Dr. biol. Artūrs Ābols

Project partner: Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia

Summary

The gut microbiota and their products have a critical role in human health and are involved in all physiological processes. It is well now known that altered microflora can lead to the development of various diseases, including malignancies. One of the ways in which these processes in the body are potentially influenced by the microflora is through extracellular vesicles (EVs) and the RNA content in them, but currently research methods for these processes are limited. Classical in vitro methods cannot mimic the entry of the microbiome EV from the intestinal lumen into the circulatory system, but animal models do not fully reflect the processes in the human body and are ethically questionable models for these studies. One of the most promising methods currently in microflora research is the gut on chip (GoC) platform, however so far, the available solution has not been applied and designed for the study of the microbiome EV content. Therefore, the aim of this project is to study EV RNA content of cancer patient microbiome, that can enter from lumen to circulation by applying GoC devices already developed in a collaboration between BMC and ISSP. These results will provide answers to fundamental questions about human-microorganism interactions in the future, as well as give the opportunity to study and testing of clinical microflora samples from different patients for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.

Information published 01.12.2020.