They are believed to enter rapidly in anoikis after exfoliation. In cells having lost contact with tissue structure, autophagy corresponds to the recycling of cellular material as well as to the cell capacity to mobilize reserves during periods of starvation. Autophagy is viewed as a survival mechanism during fasting periods; autophagy must, however, be controlled/stopped at the whole organism level to prevent self-digestion. Anoikis can be considered as an autophagic state promoting epithelial cell survival after a timely loss of contact with extracellular matrix and cell neighbors . Further molecular work on gastric exfoliated cells of preterm infants would be needed to delineate anoikis from apoptosis. A functional assay designed directly on the cell suspension right after the isolation process would be highly desirable but difficult to perform due to the small number of cells and the need to cross-check the cellular phenotypes. Phenotype and physiological profiling by a transcriptomic approach will help to crosscheck the diversity of these H+/K+-ATPase-positive cells. Our data nevertheless pave the way to the selection of primary cell cultures derived from human preterm gastric mucosa. We cannot trace exactly the cellular position in the infant��s stomach but it would be of crucial interest to know Torin 1 mTOR inhibitor whether the exfoliated gastric cells can be used to build long-lived gastric units in vitro . After solving the problem of heavy bacterial contamination of cells, we AZD2281 believe that it would be informative to design a functional assay on these cell cultures to ascertain which part of the stomach they are their representative? Our study was undertaken to explore the time course of exfoliation from birth to the time of removal of naso-gastric tube. From samples obtained between the 5th day of life up to nasogastric tube removal , we did not find any effect of the gestational age nor of gender but we found a strong effect of post-natal age and enteral volume . Consequently, the gastric epithelium is mature and functional within few days after birth whatever the term of birth between 25 to 32 weeks. A nonsignificant influence of milk formula on the intensity of exfoliation has been found calling for future works on the influence of feeding schedule or of various milk formulas on gastric epithelium��s exfoliation. According to current works on the nutritional induction of exfoliation by nutrients made on rodents, gastric epithelial cell exfoliation may represent a direct way to appreciate the nutritional or pharmacological stress induced by a substance on the epithelium��s homeostasis.