Study in a Sentence: Scientists at the Dutch food research organization NIZO and the University of Twente have developed a human-relevant, microfluidic “Gut-Brain Axis on Chip” that models how dietary components travel from the digestive system to the brain and affect cognitive processes, offering a powerful new tool for studying nutrition’s impact on cognition and learning without animal or human testing.
Healthy for Humans: The gut and the brain are in constant conversation, exchanging chemical signals that influence mood, cognition, immunity, and metabolic health. Disruptions in this gut–brain axis have been linked to conditions such as anxiety, depression, neurodegenerative disease, and metabolic disorders. However, the precise mechanisms behind how diet affects brain function have remained largely unclear. Using human-derived cells, researchers developed a microfluidic chip that connects a model of the human gut to a model of the brain through tiny, flowing channels that mimic blood circulation. This system allows scientists to introduce specific nutrients, food components, or microbial metabolites into the “gut” side and observe how signals travel to and affect brain cells. By measuring inflammatory markers, neurotransmitter-related signaling, and barrier integrity, the Gut-Brain Axis on Chip reveals how diet-driven processes can directly shape brain health, offering an early, reliable way to identify promising ingredients before committing to human studies.
Redefining Research: The Gut-Brain Axis on Chip replaces animal experiments with a human-relevant, scientifically rigorous system that reflects human physiology. It enables precise testing of foods, nutritional therapies, and pharmaceutical compounds for their effects on brain aging, cognition, and early-life brain development and opens the door to safer, faster development of dietary strategies and therapies that are grounded in human biology, not animal guesswork.