Jason Ford
“The things that you do in the name of science.” Malcolm Hebblewhite recalls the day he found himself and three colleagues in a darkened lab, stripped to the waist, slathered with ultrasound gel and crowded around a monitor as if they were in a birthing suite. They weren’t admiring developing fetuses, though – they were searching for experimental capsules that they had fitted with sensors to sniff out intestinal gases. Each of them had swallowed one of these and was now excitedly watching it wend its way through their gut.
It’s the kind of work that requires an intrepid spirit – and a keen sense of humour. “A bunch of engineers, developing a product to effectively measure farts. It’s just the gift that keeps on giving, right?” says Hebblewhite. “I mean, the material is endless.”
But there is a serious side to the work being done at Atmo Biosciences, a medical device company based in Melbourne, Australia. Once dismissed as noxious, antisocial waste, it is now clear that intestinal gases are a vital part of our physiology. A window into the health of our guts, they help govern our gut microbiome, influence our gut function and perhaps even that of other organs too. Knowing more about them could transform our understanding of gut health and debilitating conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and inflammatory bowel disease.
“I think the revolution is going to come when we can measure these gases well, throughout the…
