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New Delhi: Researchers from IIT Delhi and AIIMS have developed an ingestible microdevice that collects sample bacteria from the small intestine, allowing scientists to study the gut microbiome. The robot is similar to a pill. The microbes lining our guys helps us digest food, build immunity and even regulate mood through the gut-brain axis. Studying the gut microbiome has proved challenging because existing tools such as endoscopy or ileostomy are invasive, with indirect methods such as stool samples not reflecting the conditions higher up in the digestive tract. A paper describing the findings has been published in the Small scientific journal.

Principle investigator of the study, Sarvesh Kumar Srivastava explains, “To say there is a hidden universe of living microbes in our body is no exaggeration but a scientific reality – we call it the human microbiome. Just as we send rovers to explore outer space, we need miniaturized devices to explore the inner space of the human body. The prototype microdevice, once swallowed, can autonomously collect microbes from specific regions of the upper GI tract, allowing species-level identification of the residing microbes, among other biomarkers.”

How the microdevice works

The microdevice appears similar to a pill, is similar in size to a grain of rice, and can be swallowed with water. The pill remains shut during its passage through the stomach, but opens up in the intestine to collect gut bacterial, then seals itself shut again to keep the sample safe while moving through the digestive tract. The team has filed a patent for the device, and validated the gut-sampling technology in an animal model. Co-senior author of the paper, Samagra Agarwal  says, “The small intestine plays a crucial role in health and disease. Understanding the microbes and chemicals being released there could be key to early disease detection, monitoring of chronic diseases, and developing more targeted treatments.”