A team, led by Professor Louis Phee, NTU Dean of Engineering, and Professor Lawrence Ho, a clinician-innovator at NUHS, who is also a gastroenterogist at the NUH, has developed a self-inflating weight management capsule that could be used to treat obese patients.
Called the EndoPil, the prototype capsule contains a balloon that can be self-inflated with a handheld magnet once it is in the stomach, thus inducing a sense of fullness. Its magnetically-activated inflation mechanism causes a reaction between a harmless acid and a salt stored in the capsule, which produces carbon dioxide to fill up the balloon. The concept behind the capsule is for it to be ingested orally, though trials using this route for administration have not yet begun.
The orally-administered self-inflating weight loss capsule could represent a non-invasive alternative to tackle the growing global obesity epidemic.
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