A team led by the University of Tokyo has developed a compact capsule fitted with a small extendable brush that can collect samples from the small intestine. Commercial capsule endoscopes are mainly used to capture images and do not routinely collect samples, and the small intestine is hard to explore because it is long and narrow.
The capsule contains a flexible brush, a screw mechanism and magnets. In laboratory tests on extracted pig intestines, two robotic arms with external magnets controlled it without contact: one held the capsule steady near the target area, while the other turned the internal screw to extend the brush, collect the sample and retract it again.
The samples obtained proved suitable for 16S rRNA gene sequencing, a method widely used in microbiome analysis. The work, led by postdoctoral researcher Yuguo Dai, was published in the journal Device.
The project is still at an early stage: the capsule will need to be made smaller, the magnetic control must work at a greater distance for use in the human body, and the samples will need to be protected. If clinically validated, the device could complement existing endoscopic examinations and offer a more comfortable alternative.
