Devices and methods for collecting gastrointestinal samples

Abstract

Disclosed is a method of identifying and/or localizing a pathology comprising sequentially collecting liquid samples from regions of GI tract into a single tube to form a linear array of samples within the single tube, localizing each of the samples to a specific region of the GI tract, and characterizing cells and/or biomolecules in each sample and associating the cells and/or the biomolecules with a pathology to a specific region of the GI tract to thereby identify and/or localize the pathology. Another method of localizing the pathology comprises sequentially collecting liquid samples from regions of a GI tract into a single tube to form a linear array of samples within the single tube, characterizing cells and/or biomolecules in each liquid sample, and identifying a GI region where the cells and/or the biomolecules of interest first appear, thereby localizing the pathology to a specific region of the GI tract.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.