{"id":780,"date":"2013-07-28T08:41:21","date_gmt":"2013-07-28T12:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=780"},"modified":"2017-07-28T09:13:52","modified_gmt":"2017-07-28T13:13:52","slug":"getting-grip-better-biopsies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2013\/07\/getting-grip-better-biopsies\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting a Grip on Better Biopsies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MuGripper\"<\/a>When movie audiences in 1966 thrilled to watch a diminutive submarine race through a man\u2019s arteries to save him from a deadly blood clot, The Fantastic Voyage was exactly that: an incredible story ripped from the pages of a science fiction novel.<\/p>\n

Half a century later, the notion of deploying miniaturized tools into the body\u2019s tiniest conduits and organs is no longer either fantastic or incredible: It\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor more than 50 years, people have been talking about doing this, but we have actually done it.\u201d David Gracias<\/cite><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the newest and most exciting examples of this comes out of the laboratory of David Gracias<\/a>, the Russell Croft Faculty Scholar and an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering<\/a>. A team led by Gracias, along with postdoctoral fellow Evin Gultepe and gastroenterologists Eun Shin and Florin Selaru of the Department of Medicine, has\u2014 for the first time ever\u2014sent hundreds hundreds of untethered, dust-particle sized devices into the digestive system of a living animal to collect tissue for biopsies.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor more than 50 years, people have been talking about doing this, but we have actually done it,\u201d says Gracias, co-author on a paper about the research that appeared in recent issues of Gastroenterology and Advanced Materials.<\/p>\n

The ultrathin chromiumand- gold instruments called \u201cmu-grippers,\u201d each measuring less than a millimeter in diameter, can collect living cells from hardto- access places in the body without being attached to any wires or tubes, and without being powered by batteries or any external sources. Instead, Gracias and his team cleverly designed the grippers to respond to thermal and biochemical signals.<\/p>\n

Stored on ice before the procedure, the mu-grippers\u2019 six three-jointed digits extend straight out from the center \u201cpalm.\u201d But once deployed via endoscope into the warm GI tract, the grippers\u2019 polymer-coated joints soften, causing them to attach to mucosa and excise tissue samples. They are then collected by a magnet inserted through the endoscope, so the DNA can be harvested and examined for mutations and signs of cancer or other pathology.
\n\"MuGripper\"<\/a>
\nTaking a biopsy this way is far superior to the conventional method, according to Selaru, who also is a molecular biologist.<\/p>\n

\u201cA typical cancer-surveillance endoscopic session for patients \u2026 involves taking about 30 random forceps samples of colon tissue, two at a time, which is time-consuming. The endoscopist can\u2019t take more samples than that because it will cause undue trauma to the tissue. But with the mu-grippers, we can get literally hundreds of samples from various parts of the colon with little or no trauma,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

Even more important is the fact that the greater the number of tissue samples taken, the greater the chance (statistically) of finding mutations-in-the-making.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used a mathematical model that showed that it would take up to 1,000 samples to make sure you don\u2019t miss a peanut-sized lesion,\u201d says Gracias, who also is affiliated with the Institute for NanoBioTechnology. \u201cWhen you consider that, it\u2019s not surprising that when you sample only a small part of the colon, you might miss something vitally important.”<\/p>\n

As promising as the technology is, though, the team has more work to do before it can be tried in humans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have provisional patents on the design, and [the mu-grippers] are very easy and inexpensive to make,\u201d Gracias says. \u201cAs we move toward this becoming a medical device, there is much finetuning to do. But in the end, we think this will be a real paradigm shift in the way biopsies are done, and that\u2019s really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By using swarms of untethered grippers, each as small as a speck of dust, Johns Hopkins engineers have devised a new, more effective way to perform biopsies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-ideas","issue-summer-2013"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGetting a Grip on Better Biopsies - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2013\/07\/getting-grip-better-biopsies\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Getting a Grip on Better Biopsies - 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