Infogest (Improving Health Properties of Food by Sharing our Knowledge on the Digestive Process) is an EU COST action/network in the domain of Food and Agriculture that will last for 4 years from April 4, 2011. Infogest aims at building an open international network of institutes undertaking multidisciplinary basic research on food digestion gathering scientists from different origins (food scientists, gut physiologists, nutritionists). The network gathers 70 partners from academia, corresponding to a total of 29 countries. The three main scientific goals are: Identify the beneficial food components released in the gut during digestion; Support the effect of beneficial food components on human health; Promote harmonization of currently used digestion models Infogest meetings highlighted the need for a publication that would provide researchers with an insight into the advantages and disadvantages associated with the use of respective in vitro and ex vivo assays to evaluate the effects of foods and food bioactives on health. Such assays are particularly important in situations where a large number of foods/bioactives need to be screened rapidly and in a cost effective manner in order to ultimately identify lead foods/bioactives that can be the subject of in vivo assays. The book is an asset to researchers wishing to study the health benefits of their foods and food bioactives of interest and highlights which in vitro/ex vivo assays are of greatest relevance to their goals, what sort of outputs/data can be generated and, as noted above, highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the various assays. It is also an important resource for undergraduate students in the food and health arena.

Introduction.- Gastrointestinal digestion models, general introduction.- Static digestion models general introduction.- InfoGest consensus method.- Approaches to static digestion models.- Dynamic digestion models general introduction.- The TNO gastro-Intestinal Model (TIM).- Dynamic Gastric Model (DGM).- Human Gastric Simulator (Riddet model).- The DIDGI® System.- General introduction to cells, cell lines and cell culture.- Epithelial cell models; General introduction.- Caco-2 cell line.- HT29 cell line.- The IPEC-J2 cell line.- Co-cultivation of Caco-2 and HT-29MT.- Innate and adaptive immune cells; General introduction.- THP-1 and U937 cells.- Peripheral blood mononuclear cells.- PBMC-derived T cells.- Dendritic Cells.- Co-culture Caco-2/ immune cells.- Enteroendocrine Cell Models: General introduction.- STC-1 cells.- NCI-H716 cells.- Murine GLUTag cells.- In vitro intestinal tissue models: General introduction.- Intestinal crypt organoids as experimental models.- Porcine ex vivointestinal segment model.- Ussing chamber.- In vitro fermentation models: General Introduction.- One compartment fermentation model.- The TNO in vitro model of the colon - TIM-2.- The Simulator of the Human Intestinal Microbial Ecosystem SHIME®.- The computer-controlled multicompartmental dynamic model of the gastrointestinal system SIMGI.