At the begining of our project, we aimed to enable iron chelation in the duodenum using bacteria that would flush through the duodenum and produce the siderophores. Therefore we wanted to predict the minimal quantity of produced siderophores sufficient to reduce the iron intestinal absorption. We first had in mind a flush strategy, meaning we prioritized an approach where the bacteria would start their iron sensing and siderophore production before entering the duodenum. This qualitative Flush treatment model showed us that it is theoretically possible to significantly reduce the patient's iron absorption.

The conclusions were promising, encouraging and comforting regarding our strategy. Therefore we investigated in detail the delay in siderophore production for a given bacterial production through an Enterobactin production model that integrate our sensor, invertor and chelator systems. This investigation gave us more details on timings. Unfortunately, the conclusions were in contradiction with the qualitative model because the delay is too important to be compatible with a flush strategy. This finding greatly influenced the biological part, especially the capsule design. Because iron absorption is split between the duodenum (60%) and the jejunum (40%), we decided to retain bacteria in duodenum and the proximal area of the jejunum.

We also wanted to know how much siderophore can be produced and how we can improve this. We answered this with a Genome scale model, using a flux balance analysis approach.

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