The intestinal microbiome is known to play an important role in host health. Also in toxicology, the microbiome is gaining increasing attention both because of its role in xenobiotic metabolism affecting the toxicity of foodborne compounds, and as a target organ for chemical toxicity. Since in vitro toxicity testing strategies to assess these chemical microbial interactions are limited, we aim to develop an in vitro testing strategy to study the interactions of the intestinal microbiome with xenobiotics. To this end we characterize the in vitro anaerobic incubations with rat or human faecal samples to provide insight in the metabolic potential of the gut microbiome to modify xenobiotics. For these studies we use the mycotoxin Fumonisin B1 and the Amadori product fructoselysine as relevant model compounds. Subsequently we characterise the consequences for bioavailability, toxicity and host health of the parent compounds and the resulting metabolites using relevant in vitro mammalian cell models. In addition we use metabolomics to characterise the effect of our model compounds on the microbiome to obtain an insight in possible toxic effects on the microbiome as well as on the host metabolite profile. Together, this novel interdisciplinary approach will contribute to define a test battery that enables quantification of chemical microbiome interactions and their consequences for host health using in vitro testing strategies.
