Microbiome sampling: Lallemand and Nimble Science team up on ingestible capsule

02 Feb 2021 --- Lallemand Health Solutions and medical device company Nimble Science are preparing to trial an ingestible capsule that can capture samples of the human gut microbiome.

The study, called “Use of the Small Intestine Microbiome Aspiration (SIMBA) Capsule to detect Dietary Intervention in the Small Intestine,” will recruit 20 participants and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2021.

The collaboration hopes the SIMBA capsule technology will prove effective as a personalized research tool for investigating the cause of health conditions, biomarkers and measuring medication impact.

Speaking to NutritionInsight, Joseph Gang Wang, chief executive officer at Nimble Science, explains how the new technology works. 

“The SIMBA capsule is 8 mm in diameter and 22 mm in length, which is about the size of a fish oil capsule. It does not have any electronics inside.” 

“The capsule utilizes the conventional intestinal-targeted drug delivery technology to control the sampling location. Once a fluidic sample is collected in the small intestine, the capsule autonomously seals the sample to prevent it from being contaminated by the colonic and environmental microbiota.”

The SIMBA capsule travels through the intestines collecting DNA samples of the gut microbiome.Beyond feces 
Wang states that the SIMBA capsule marks an advance in gut microbiome research, which traditionally has relied on testing fecal samples. 

“The message is clear: fecal samples can not be a proxy for the whole gut. In fact, it may be misleading as the most important part of the intestine in terms of nutrition is the small intestine.” 

“With this clinical trial, the team hopes to dismantle barriers in small bowel sampling to ensure that gastrointestinal (GI) clinicians and researchers can better discover and understand the interrelationship of microbiota, diet and host cells, and the interpersonal variation of nutrient metabolism,” he continues. 

Upcoming SIMBA trials 
The study aims to show that Nimble Science’s SIMBA capsule is a safe and effective tool to collect the small bowel microbiota, which is different from the fecal microbiota and hence not as easily testable. 

Twenty health participants will ingest the SIMBA capsules a few days before a probiotic intervention to capture their small bowel microbiota baseline. 

Sequential low-dose X-ray scans will be applied to track the location and sampling status of the SIMBA capsules. Researchers hope it will break the limitations of testing on fecal matter.

“Then, they will take SIMBA capsules together with a probiotic capsule provided by Lallemand Health Solutions to capture the probiotic strain in the small intestine,” explains Sara Caballero, a clinical research specialist at Lallemand’s Rosell Institute for microbiome and probiotics. 

“The SIMBA capsules will then be collected, and the samples within the capsules will be removed to have the DNA extracted.”

The researchers will then run 16s sequencing, an RNA analysis technique, on the extracted DNA to show the compositional difference between the small bowel and fecal microbiota. 

They will also perform strain-specific quantitative polymerase chain reactions (qPCR) to quantify the amount of probiotic strains captured by the small bowel’s SIMBA capsule. 

Aiding vaccine development 
Beyond SIMBA’s role as a microbiome testing device, Wang also says it may potentially aid some aspects of vaccine development. 

“For COVID-19, it would not likely be on the critical path for rapid vaccine development. However, it could have a use in large-scale studies of safety, efficacy and related questions such as the impact on viral replication and shedding, and possibly for the development of second-generation vaccines and therapeutics.” 

“Its role in vaccines and therapeutics for GI-targeted viruses would be even greater.”

By Louis Gore-Langton