In an effort to overcome these limitations, a team at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering led by its Founding Director, Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., had previously engineered a microfluidic «Organ - on - a-Chip» (Organ Chip) culture device in
which cells from a human
intestinal cell line originally isolated from a
tumor were cultured in one of two parallel running channels, separated by a porous matrix - coated membrane from human blood vessel - derived endothelial cells in the adjacent channel.
This study demonstrated that emulsifier - induced alterations in the microbiome were necessary and sufficient to drive alterations in
intestinal epithelial cells» homeostasis,
which is thought to govern
tumor development.