A soft, sleeve-like robot that grows from its tip will crawl through the colon to find and remove cancerous polyps without the pain of conventional colonoscopy. Colorectal cancer is often caught late because standard colonoscopy is uncomfortable and many people avoid it, while existing tools for removing polyps carry high risks of incomplete removal or complications that can lead to major surgery. This project builds a robot that extends like an everting tube—think of pushing the finger of a glove inside out—so it advances without dragging against the colon wall, causing less pain. The robot carries multiple imaging sensors and a miniature surgical chamber to its target, allowing doctors to detect, characterise, and remove polyps in a single, gentle procedure. If successful, the system could make screening far more acceptable, catching cancers earlier and removing them more safely. That would reduce the need for life-changing bowel surgery and improve survival rates for millions of people. Beyond colorectal cancer, the same eversion-robot platform could be adapted for other hollow organs, such as the stomach or blood vessels, opening a new class of minimally invasive endoluminal interventions.
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Colorectal cancer (CRC) represents a significant proportion of malignant diseases. Interventions are often carried out during the latter stages of development, leading to low patient survival rates and poor quality of life. In 2022 a European Commission report stated that "colonoscopy-based screening has higher sensitivity than testing for blood in stool, but it is less acceptable to participants". At the same time, effective methods to treat polyps in the colon are limited. Current approaches are often associated with unsafe oncological margins and high complication rates, requiring life-changing surgery. EndoTheranostics will usher in a new era for screening colonoscopy, advancing the frontiers of medical imaging and robotics. A tipgrowing or eversion robot with a sleeve-like structure will be created to extend deep into hollow spaces while perceiving the environment through multimodal imaging and sensing. It will also act as a conduit to transfer miniaturised instruments to the remote site within the colon for diagnosis and therapy (theranostics). With these capabilities, the system will be able to offer: 1. painless colon cleansing in preparation for endoscopy; 2. real-time polyp detection and tissue characterisation through AI-assisted multimodal imaging; 3. effective removal of polyps by conveying a "miniature mobile operating chamber" equipped with microsurgical tools to the target through the lumen of the eversion robot. The unique technical and clinical challenges will be tackled by the PIs, each bringing complementary skills, backed by their institutions with wide expertise and exceptional facilities. The synergy and added value evident in this team will lead to breakthroughs not possible through independent research. The outcomes of EndoTheranostics will revolutionise the theranostics of CRC, impacting the quality of life of millions of individuals. Ultimately it will launch a new era for endoluminal intervention with applications beyond medicine.
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