Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have built an ingestible capsule that will be able to diagnose disease in the gastrointestinal tract without using invasive procedures, according to a new paper in the journal Science.
“You’d normally need to go in and do an endoscopy or colonoscopy to diagnose these problems,” said Mark Mimee, an MIT Ph.D. student in microbiology and lead author. “As you can imagine, that’s very costly and uncomfortable for patients.”
He added, “This device sets the stage for having a pill that can give you a big biochemical profile of the gut related to various diseases.”
The device — about 3 centimeters long and a centimeter across — is made out of bacterial cells similar to an over-the-counter probiotic. It uses low-power electronics that allow the device to start glowing when it senses bleeding and inflammation. That information is then immediately sent to a smartphone.
The capsule was tested on pigs, but has not yet been used in humans.
The sensor is powered with a 2.7-volt battery, which researchers estimate could power the device for about 1 1⁄2 months of continuous use.
Mimee said later versions of the capsule will be able to diagnose specific diseases.
“Right now we’re still in the prototype stage,” Mimee said. “In the future, we can extend the platform to inflammatory bowel disease and cancer.”
Scientists will also aim to make the device smaller and easier to swallow, said Phillip Nadeau, a former MIT post-doc and another lead author.
“In the future we’d look to try to make it about a third smaller,” Nadeau said. “It would be about the size of a large vitamin.”
The goal, he said, is to make diagnostics easier and more comfortable for patients.
“The big picture is that we showed you could take living cells engineered to sense chemistry in gastrointestinal tract and guide that with some electronics,” he said, “and use it as a user-friendly system.”
