Research Project
9466872
Summary Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are known to be diagnostic for human health. However, the ability to effectively diagnose and classify a disease state using only patient exhaled breath is the subject of great debate. A recently published ACS Nano (Dec. 2016) multi-national clinical study on breath diagnostics by Nakhleh et al., titled ?Diagnosis and classification of 17 diseases from 1404 subjects via pattern analysis of exhaled molecules,? had the conclusion that an ?artificially intelligent nanoarray? which evaluated 1404 subjects in nine clinical settings composed of blind experiments could achieve 86% accuracy for blind experiment discrimination between diseases. This was based on the fact that each disease displayed a unique volatile molecular signature compared to healthy controls and other diseases. The results highlighted the need to continue the development of new compact VOC measurement systems that employ methods for quantification of individual components in complex mixtures of VOCs (e.g. exhaled breath). The critical barrier for development of a low-profile vapor environment monitoring device is the introduction of new solid-state transducer arrays that can quantify transient VOC doses and analyze the response profile without requiring bulky benchtop processes such as chromatography columns and associated vacuum detectors necessary for methods such as mass spectrometry. To accomplish this goal, Nanohmics Inc. proposes to develop a multiplexed VOC detetection platform based on direct electrical detection from metal oxide semiconductor arrays patterned using the method of NanoImprint Lithography (NIL) for high sensitivity signature profiling of breath-borne VOC biomarkers that will accelerate the discovery of potential new methods for disease state monitoring.
