Using a dynamic stomach model to study efficacy of supplemental enzymes during simulated digestion

In vitro static digestion models, with constant pH and volume, are commonly used to evaluate supplementary enzyme activity. The research objective was to apply a dynamic stomach model, Dynamic Gastric Simulating Model (DGSM), to evaluate the efficacy of supplementary enzymes in assisting food digestion. DGSM incorporates compressive forces to disintegrate food, mimics continuous gastric emptying, and simulates gastric secretion that generated pH profiles similar to human stomach. Static and dynamic models were used to evaluate supplementary proteases (SPs) efficacy. Additionally, acid-stable supplementary fungal enzyme blends were tested on food matrix containing oil, starch, and tuna using DGSM. A prescribed pancreatic enzyme drug, CREON, was used as a comparison. In static model, porcine pepsin (PP) had higher proteolytic activities generating significantly higher average Tyrosine Equivalent (TE) concentrations at pH 1.3 and 3. DS Proteases generated comparable TE concentrations to PP at pH 5. Under DGSM, addition of DS Proteases and Peptidases generated significantly greater TE and Primary Amino Nitrogen (PAN) than PP alone. Main findings show enhanced food digestion upon adding supplementary enzymes and blends. Furthermore, DGSM showed great potential as being an alternative tool used to study enzyme performances inside the human stomach as affected by dynamic physiological conditions.