Workshop Inter-Regulation of Gastrointestinal Transport and Motility

Researchers from LRP co-organized and participated in the international workshop "Inter-Regulation of Gastrointestinal Transport and Motility", an event supported by the Lorentz Center that brought together 45 leading academic and industrial experts in Leiden (Netherlands). This workshop gathered specialists from Europe, the United States, and New Zealand, covering topics ranging from digestive pathophysiology, medical imaging, and microbiology to soft matter physicochemistry and complex flows. 

Alternating state-of-the-art presentations, research results, and interdisciplinary discussions, this event provided an exceptional framework to deepen our understanding of the inter-regulation of digestive motility and transport phenomena with the structure of food or the intestinal microbiota. Dacil I. Yanez Martin, a PhD student at LRP and TIMC, highlighted recent advances in characterizing intestinal motility at macro- and microscopic scales, and their fundamental impact on flows and mixing in the small intestine. 

Among the key moments of the workshop, discussions helped identify major scientific challenges and emphasized the urgency of an integrated approach to decipher the complex interactions between digesta and digestive mucus rheology, intestinal motility, and transfer phenomena. These insights are essential for a better understanding of the nutritional impact of food structure and the organization of the intestinal microbiota. 

The workshop concluded with the development of a structured research agenda, aiming to bring together complementary expertise from different disciplines and to design new tools for characterization, modeling, and understanding of the physics of the digestive system. 

The organizers, Clément de Loubens (LRP, CNRS, UGA), Sofieke de Jonge (Amsterdam University Medical Center), Claude Loverdo (CNRS / Sorbonne Université), Sahar El Aidy (University of Amsterdam), and Edoardo Capuano (Wageningen University & Research) sincerely thank the Lorentz Center, the French Rheology Group, the ANR TransportGut project, and the Fed3G for their essential support of this initiative.