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"Theragrippers" are tiny, shape-changing machines that deliver medicine efficiently to the GI tract
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Johns Hopkins University
Posted: February 14th, 2022
https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/11/25/theragripper-gi-tract-medicin...
Inspired by a parasitic worm that digs its sharp teeth into its host's intestines, Johns Hopkins researchers have designed tiny, star-shaped microdevices that can latch onto intestinal mucosa and release drugs into the body. David Gracias, a professor in the Whiting School of Engineering, and gastroenterologist Florin M. Selaru, director of the Johns Hopkins Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center, led a team of researchers and biomedical engineers that designed and tested shape-changing microdevices that mimic the way the parasitic hookworm affixes itself to an organism's intestines. The "theragrippers" are made of metal and a thin, shape-changing film, then coated in heat-sensitive paraffin wax. The devices, each roughly the size of a dust speck, can potentially carry any drug and release it gradually into the body. Thousands of theragrippers can be deployed in the GI tract. When the paraffin wax coating on the grippers reaches the temperature inside the body, the devices close autonomously and clamp onto the colonic wall. The closing action causes the tiny, six-pointed devices to dig into the mucosa and remain attached to the colon, where they are retained and release their medicine payloads gradually into the body. Theragrippers, says Gracias, don't rely on electricity, wireless signals or external controls. "Instead, they operate like small, compressed springs with a temperature-triggered coating on the devices that releases the stored energy autonomously."
Note: These tiny devices are literally the size of a speck of dust. They can easily be hidden in a cotton swab and administered without a person's knowledge. Might they even be put in a vaccine and go undetected? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.
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