Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi, it's me again!

Well, this year I'm entering another contest, the Sanofi Aventis Biotalent Challenge, and the deadline for the proposal is this Friday. Well I have an idea of testing Omega-3 on the inflammation of the small intestines during Celiac Disease. Celiac Disease is an autoimmune disease when our body reacts to gluten substances and causes the inflammation of the small intestine, flattening the villi and causing mal-absorbtion of key nutrients. Omega-3 as well as other plant seeds have been proven to be very effective on other autoimmune inflammatory diseases, but has never been researched with Celiac Disease. My question is, if I were to conduct this research, would there be any possible procedure that does not include testing on humans or rats? Do you know any simulants for small intestines? Your help would be greatly appreciated, every year for science help I turn to this website.

Thank you very much.

Hi!
This sounds like a really interesting project, great idea!! Unfortunately, I think that you will ultimately have to use some sort of living tissue in order to conduct your experiment. I would suggest that you consult your teacher about the competition rules as to its policy on testing on living tissue and then asking your teacher if it is possible to obtain some small tissue samples so that you can test your hypothesis. In the meantime, I found this cool website related to your topic, hope it helps!
http://www.celiac.com/articles/1051/1/C ... Page1.html

Hi,

Thank you for your response. My concern is testing on humans, animals or living tissues is not a problem. Do you know what kind of tissues I would have to use? That article is interesting, except it tested the effect of Celiac Disease on Omega-3 not Omega-3 on Celiac Disease.

Any help would be very appreciated.

Thanks again!

Hi,

Does anyone know anything about Caco-2 cells? I know a bit but not enough to explain my procedure.

Thank you.

Hi hhamodat,
You can find some more information about Caco-2 cells in these websites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caco-2, http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16753530.
Based on what I have been reading about these cells, they seem to be a little tough to grow in monolayers on a plate. However, don't get disappointed because there are still people that are successful in growing them. Do you have access to these cells in your school? Do you have experience with cell culture? They seem to be the appropriate cells for testing your hypothesis, but you may need to collaborate with some cell culture expert in order to have "happy cells" growing on the plates. It would be interesting if you could add some wheat extract to the cells, and see how they start dying or how their appearance starts to change. Once you demonstrate that, you could add both the wheat extract + omega acid and see if your hypothesis of this acid being beneficial is correct.
I hope that this helps. Good luck,
Carmen

I have worked with Caco-2s a bit. Yes, they would be an appropriate model for your small intestine cells. There are two ways to work with them. One is two just have growing cells. The other is to leave them for a couple weeks and allow them to differentiate into intestine-like cells with microvilli and such. This would add an extra layer of complexity to your project.

I'm not sure what kind of resources you have--you'll need a biosafety level 2 hood, a quality incubator with CO2, cell culture media and equipment. Working with a research lab is certainly your best bet.

good luck.

Hello again,

I have tried contacting some doctors and researchers and they have told me that Caco-2 cells woud not be of any help because they cannot show the inflammation of the intestines. Would you happen to know a model that can be used that can simulate the inflammation of the small intestine in auto-immune inflammatory diseases? And do you know any information on HLA class II transgenic mice that mimic human inflammatory diseases? I am in a very tight situation with a small frame of time- a couple of weeks. I am still looking for a mentor and a possible procedure to test the effect of Omega-3 on the inflammation of the small intestines in Celiac Disease.

Thank you so much.

I don't think you have time to work with mice if you only have a few weeks left--after all, they take time to breed and grow.

Perhaps instead of working with whole cells, you can work with the proteins or molecules in the chemical pathways that omega-3 is supposed to affect? Maybe you could do some research on what omega-3 is supposed to do, what molecules it affects, and do a test of that? This is called an in vitro (in the glass, or in a test tube) experiment as opposed to in vivo (in the animal, in the cell), which is what you want to do but, as you've found, can get more complicated.