It’s a dirty job but something’s got to do it. A robotic capsule can suck up mucus from the gut, removing the need for uncomfortable procedures.
Gut mucus can be a more accurate indicator of a person’s health than a stool sample. But the usual process for obtaining it involves inserting a long tube, called an endoscope, into someone’s gastrointestinal tract. This can be awkward and uncomfortable.
Capsules on the other hand are easy to swallow and can get to places that are hard for endoscopes to reach, so have received a lot of interest of late.
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Some capsules have cameras, others have tiny surgical tools to take biopsies. Li Zhang at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and his colleagues have built a prototype that has a vacuum bag for hoovering up mucus.
When the capsule is in place, a magnet on the outside of the body will trigger an electric current that melts a wax plug sealing the vacuum bag. Mucus is sucked into the chamber and the capsule carries its cargo through the rest of the intestine before being excreted.
The mucus in our guts protects our stomach lining from harmful bacteria and contains enzymes that help us digest food. Collecting a sample with a capsule could make accurate diagnosis of stomach infections and other digestive problems safer and less painful.
Mucus also contains gut microbes and Zhang’s team thinks that their capsules could also be used to collect samples for microbiome transplants.
Zhang says that it will be two or three years before the capsule is tested in humans, with tests first planned for other large animals, such as pigs.
The goal is for capsules like this to work as part of a team. They could be swallowed one by one before linking up in the gut to perform a range of operations – one collecting and analysing samples, another performing surgery – then splitting apart again before being evacuated.
Reference:Ìý
