Microbots for gastrointestinal health: Targeting Helicobacter pylori infection and ROS imbalance

Application to Assistant Researcher in the Individual Call to Scientific Employment Stimulus - 6th Edition. microHEROS aims to help bridge that gap in addressing some of the still unexplored challenges in the design of micro-robotic devices to accelerate their introduction in market solutions. For this, the proposal focuses on a concrete and important problem, gastrointestinal disorders (GID). GID have been increasing in both incidence and prevalence across Europe and worldwide over the past decade with significant morbidity and high burden to the healthcare system. Thus, the “big idea” of microHEROS is the design of more functional microbots (MB) boosting up the scarce state of the art on the aspects of functionalization and transformation (actuation), reaching prototypes that can execute intelligent functions under GID conditions. Thus the project seeks to combine MB’s locomotion with the ability to sense the surrounding environment and give a biocatalytic and chemical response to certain stimuli. These stimuli are i) in the case of MB1, the high levels of ROS in the inflamed gastric mucosa and the alkaline ammonium microenvironment that protects H. pylori; ii) for MB2, the characteristic alkaline pH of the colon (pH 7.4), the colonic microbiota, and the high levels of ROS around the inflamed colonic epithelium.