SIMBA Caps

The gastrointestinal (GI) tract is a critical organ with variations in physiological characteristics and functions along its length, creating distinct niches for resident microbial communities. Microbiome research has mainly focused on stool samples as a non-invasive proxy for the colon microbiota, but few non-invasive options for sampling the small intestine (SI) luminal fluid exist to study the SI microbiota in health and disease. To address the lack of tools and methods to study GI regions that are difficult to access, we aimed to develop a fully autonomous and passive sampling capsule, the Small Intestine MicroBiome Aspiration (SIMBA(R)) capsule, for convenient, high-quality and reliable sampling method for the purpose of studying the real-time host-diet-microbiota interactions in the SI.