Self-Orienting

Ingestible Electronic Pill

Summary

  • Designed and fabricated two self-orienting shapes for drug delivery and sensing of biomarkers on the GI wall

  • Created test specimen and compared self orientation capabilities of shapes using slow-motion camera

Mission

What if we can develop pills that give patients a shot inside the stomach or better align with the GI wall so we can obtain more reliable sensing data?

With self-orientation capabilities, such pills can drastically improve the lives of diabetic patients, who need injections of medication daily; or people with needle phobia, as our stomachs have few pain receptors, so the patient doesn’t feel a pinprick.

Background

The only work that targets self-orienting ingestible pills is done by MIT researcher Alex Abramson. The pill is called a Self-orienting millimeter-scale applicator (SOMA), which autonomously positions itself to engage with GI tissue.

My Role

I modeled and printed the SOMA shape and a Gomboc shape, a mathematical momo-momo static shape inspired by a type of African tortoise.

I created two test environments: the chicken breast represents the GI wall, tap water represents the gastric fluid inside the human stomach, and rice particles represent food particles.

Results

As only 1 research existed in this field, my research served as a starting point.

Both SOMA and Gomboc can self-orient in two different GI wall simulation setups.

Considering uncertainties, SOMA and Gomboc perform similarly, but Gomboc produces less stable orientation results than SOMA.

Future action items include: Testing the shapes in different solutions such as canola oil, gastric juice, and mucus; testing the shapes in different GI conditions using concave and convex surfaces; and finally, validating the pill in vivo / ex vivo.

Huge thanks to Angsagan Abdigazy, Mohammed Arfan, and Professor Yasser Khan