Researchers at IIT Delhi on Tuesday announced the development of an ingestible device that can sample bacteria directly from the small intestine, opening a new window into the human gut microbiome.
While not all bacteria are harmful, nearly half of all cells in the human body are microbial. These organisms line our gut and help us digest food, regulate mood, and build immunity.
Yet studying them has remained difficult. Existing tools are invasive, such as endoscopy or ileostomy, or indirect, relying on stool samples that do not truly reflect conditions higher up in the digestive tract.
The device, a tiny pill, once swallowed, stays shut in the stomach. It opens only in the intestine to collect bacteria, then seals itself again to keep the sample safe while moving through the gut, revealed the study, conducted in collaboration with the AIIMS, Delhi and funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
“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 miniaturised devices to explore the inner space of the human body,” explained Prof. Sarvesh Kumar Srivastava, Principal Investigator at the Medical Microdevices and Medicine Laboratory (3MLab), CBME, IIT Delhi.
“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,” Srivastava added.
The device comprises an enteric-coated gelatin cap that protects it in gastric pH (1-1.5) and disintegrates at intestinal pH (3-5), allowing luminal fluid via an inlet connected to activation and sampling chambers.
The gut-sampling technology, publishing in the journal Small, has been validated in an animal model using a microdevice no larger than a grain of rice. The results showed promise without tissue injury or inflammation.
“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,” said co-senior author Dr. Samagra Agarwal from the Department of Gastroenterology and Human Nutrition Unit at AIIMS New Delhi.
The researchers noted that they aim to advance this platform technology to help Indian patients in the clinic after necessary approvals.
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