Gives an entirely new flavor to organ donation.....
Fecal transplants may have just gotten a lot easier to swallow.
OpenBiome, the nation’s first stool bank, is beginning large-scale production of a poop pill. This week marks the first time such a pill will be commercially available to hospitals and clinics.
Early tests suggest the pill is highly effective and comparable to traditional, more invasive delivery methods — for instance via colonoscopy, enema or a plastic tube through the nose and into the stomach or intestines.
Developing a pill that would not dissolve because of what it was delivering was the engineering task faced by the company.
After about a year and a half of work and testing, researchers at OpenBiome came up with something they’re calling the Microbial Emulsion Matrix (MEM).
Basically they’re taking the poop and suspending it in oil. The oil prevents the water from dissolving the capsule. Then, they freeze the capsule. This doesn’t kill the bacteria but it does make them inactive, stopping them from breaking down the capsule. Only once the pill is inside the gut does it break down — this time from bacteria on the outside, instead of on the inside.