Technion professor Hossam Haick has developed a nanosystem that can identify the breath signatures of many diseases, including kidney failure, lung cancer, Crohn’s disease, MS, prostate and ovarian cancer. Each compound’s relative abundance in a person’s breath is assessed, and disease signatures are compared against healthy individuals.
In a recent study, using mass spectrometry analysis, specific compound signatures for 17 different diseases were identified. The breath of 1,400 people was sampled, using a sensory array of carbon nanotubes and gold particles to register the compound mix they exhaled. Algorithms determined the presence or absence of each disease.
Haick’s goal is for the system to be used to screen widely for disease, even among those with no symptoms, to allow earlier interventions.
ApplySci’s 6th Digital Health + NeuroTech Silicon Valley – February 7-8 2017 @ Stanford | Featuring: Vinod Khosla – Tom Insel – Zhenan Bao – Phillip Alvelda – Nathan Intrator – John Rogers – Roozbeh Ghaffari –Tarun Wadhwa – Eythor Bender – Unity Stoakes – Mounir Zok – Sky Christopherson – Marcus Weldon – Krishna Shenoy – Karl Deisseroth – Shahin Farshchi – Casper de Clercq – Mary Lou Jepsen – Vivek Wadhwa – Dirk Schapeler – Miguel Nicolelis