IIT-D and AIIMS develop swallowable microdevice for microbiome study

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) have developed an ingestible device that can sample bacteria directly from the small intestine, opening a new window into the human gut microbiome.

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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 prototype microdevice, once swallowed, can autonomously collect microbes from specific regions of the upper GI tract, a