INFOGEST: an international network of excellence on the fate of food in the gastrointestinal tract

Infogest aims at building an open international network of institutes undertaking multidisciplinary basic research on food digestion gathering scientists from different origins (food scientists, gut physiologists, nutritionists…).

Infogest targets three main scientific goals:

• Identify the beneficial food components released in the gut during digestion
• Support the effect of beneficial food components on human health
• Promote harmonization of currently used digestion models

Major outcomes of the Network so far

INFOGEST allowed the harmonization of the methodologies used to study digestion and proposed guidelines for performing new experiments. One of the major outcomes of the Network was the release and publication of a consensus model of in vitro digestion that has been cited more than 1500 times since 2014 and has been updated in a paper released by Nature Protocols (Brodkorb et al. 2019). The model is now used all around the world and can be learned through videos available on a YouTube channel specifically created for the Action with more than 15000 views in 4 years. Beside an increased knowledge on the digestive process that is now shared among all the participants, the other outcomes were:

• the validation of in vitro models towards in vivo data (animal and human)
• the identification of bioactives released in the gut during digestion (databases available)
• the demonstration of the impact of the structure of food on its disintegration in the gut
• the bioavailability of food nutrients and bioactives
• a better knowledge on the relationship between food and human health.

Five ring-trials have been organized within the network (1) to compare different models of in vitro digestion on the same dairy sample, (2) to check the effect of processing on the digestion of meat and pasta, (3) to characterize food by a multi-scale (from the molecular to the macroscopic level) strategy. INFOGEST has funded 36 staff exchanges between partners for a total of 100 months spent abroad. INFOGEST has created the International Conference of Food Digestion (6 issues between 2012 and 2019, ICFD7 will be held in Cork in May 2021) that is now regularly followed by more than 250 scientists. It had a strong leverage effect with more than 80 national and international spin-off projects allowing to raise more than 54 M€ of funding for the participants. Around 120 peer-reviewed publications involving at least 2 different partners from INFOGEST have been released, whereas an open access 341-page book has reviewed all the in vitro and in vivo tools available. INFOGEST has established strong connections between academic and industry partners. Indeed, more than 55 private companies (SMEs as well as large groups), mainly from the food sector, have been involved in the Network allowing to initiate joint projects. Finally, INFOGEST has strong connections with EFSA and is often questioned about the digestion models that could be used to predict allergenicity of new proteins.