Xiaoguang Dong, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has received an R21 grant—designed to support early-stage, exploratory research—from the National Institutes of Health for a magnetically powered stent that could help restore swallowing in patients with esophageal cancer.
The project is in collaboration with co-investigator Rishi Naik, MD, MSCI, assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The $423,142 award follows inclusion in Vanderbilt University’s 2025 Innovation Catalyst Awards, which provides pre-seed funding to accelerate the translation of research into real-world solutions.
While current esophageal stents can help keep the esophagus open, they don’t address impaired peristalsis, the involuntary, wave-like contraction and relaxation of muscles that propel food and fluids through the digestive tract. To solve this problem, Dong proposes a magnetic esophageal stent integrated with a soft robotic pump that can wirelessly mimic peristaltic motion.
“The proposed technology has the potential to establish a new class of implantable medical devices that can significantly improve patient outcomes and quality of life,” said Dong, a member of the Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. “More broadly, this work may open new therapeutic avenues for gastrointestinal diseases and other dysmotility-related disorders that are increasingly prevalent in the aging population.”
In 2025, Dong also received a $622,769 NSF CAREER Award to advance research on magnetic miniature soft robots for precision medicine.