Recently, our research group successfully published a research article titled "Modified Prebiotic-Based “Shield” Armed Probiotics with Enhanced Resistance of Gastrointestinal Stresses and Prolonged Intestinal Retention for Synergistic Alleviation of Colitis" on ACS Nano (SCI Q1 journal of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Top journal, 2022-2023 impact factor: 17.1).

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) mainly include Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) and have aroused broad interests around word. With the progress in the study of probiotic, multiple studies have shown that gut modulation by probiotics plays a crucial part to fight IBD. Probiotics are a class of microorganisms that can bring benefits to the host, with the characteristics of regulating blood glucose metabolism, maintaining gut microbiota balance, improving lactose intolerance, enhancing immune functions, and so on. Despite aforementioned advances, probiotics usually demonstrate poor stability, high sensitivity to gastrointestinal environmental stresses during oral administration, resulting in inferior therapeutic outcome. What’s more, the low bacterial colonization efficacy, due to the inferior adhesion of probiotics to the intestinal wall, would further compromise the therapeutic effect. Hence, it is urgent to develop a simple yet effective way to enhance the resistance ability of gastrointestinal environmental stresses as well as prolong intestinal retention for probiotics to better demonstrate their functions in vivo. Herein, we developed a modified-prebiotic “shield” to improve the survival rate and retention of prebiotics in the gut so as to achieve the synergistic treatment effect in DSS-induced colitis mice. In our study, the modified prebiotic armed EcN demonstrated significantly enhanced resistance ability of gastrointestinal stresses and external environmental stresses compared with bare EcN, greatly improving the robust use of probiotics as well as expanding the application of probiotics. The protection offered by the modified-prebiotic “shield” could improve the colonization of EcN within colon with high survival rates after oral administration, which leaded to an enhanced treatment effect of colitis in comparison with bare EcN, verified by the repaired intestinal barrier and the attenuation of inflammation. Wide-field in vivo and ex vivo fluorescence imaging confirmed the modfied prebiotic prolonged the intestinal retention of EcN compared with bare EcN in DSS-induced colitis mice. Moreover, the modified prebiotic armed EcN significantly increased the abundance of beneficial bacteria and simultaneously reduced the abundance of harmful bacteria. The modified prebiotic armed EcN significantly increased the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), beneficial for the intestinal health. Due to the synergistic effect of prebiotic with EcN, the behavior of prebiotic in regulating the gut may change characterized by altered SCFAs composition, leading to the production of more butyric acid associated with gut health. Through proteomics analysis, we found that the treatment by the modified prebiotic armed EcN could relieve gut barrier dysfunction and mitochondrial dysfunction in DSS-induced colitis mice.

Paper link: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.3c02914