Diagnostics to take your breath away - Nature Biotechnology

  • 📰 NatureBiotech
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 89 sec. here
  • 3 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Qulity Score:
  • News: 39%
  • Publisher: 63%

Diagnostics to take your breath away - edbites

United States Headlines News

United States Latest News, United States Headlines

For breath diagnostics to become mainstream, engineers needed to build a device more like a Breathalyzer. To do that, scientists took their inspiration from mammalian olfactory systems. Our brains recognize an odor not by singling out a specific chemical but by analyzing patterns of how olfactory receptors are activated. To replicate that in a device, engineers built a machine that was filled with electrochemical sensor arrays, often coated with metal oxides.

Singapore-based Breathonix, spun out from the National University of Singapore by Zhunan Jia and her colleagues, has developed a device that relies on mass spectrometric analysis for much the same reasons as Hill and Davis. “A lot of molecules in the breath have very similar structures and chemical properties, and they can be viewed as having the same pattern on sensors,” Jia says.

Breathe Biomedical, based in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, uses a type of IR spectroscopy called cavity ring-down spectroscopy. The company got its start with a technology developed at the University of Alberta to analyze emissions and gas leaks in oil sands fields. Breath poses a similar problem. The company designed a tabletop device that can capture alveolar breath on sorbent tubes. The tubes are then analyzed using IR-CRDS at the company’s headquarters.

Kade France, chief technology officer at Sotech Health, says that an e-nose is ideal for this since the tests are detecting shifts in the ratio of VOCs produced by the body and not pinpointing a specific biomarker, so the devices’ ability to sense patterns is perfectly suited. Perhaps the biggest challenge for breath-based detectors has been in validating small studies in larger, more diverse populations. The innate variability of human breath is testing’s biggest strength and its Achilles’ heel.

To Boyle, what the field needs more than another nifty gizmo is some basic science work. Researchers still don’t have an idea of what can be found in ‘normal’ breath, and until they have that answer, any breath-based test is going to be fraught with uncertainty, he says. But money for such experiments is hard to come by, leading to clinical validation in groups of people that are too small.

We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 231. in US
 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.

Oh fcuk AI enhanced masks

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

People - Nature BiotechnologyPeople Recent moves of note in and around the biotech and pharma industries
Source: NatureBiotech - 🏆 231. / 63 Read more »

Variant to function mapping at single-cell resolution through network propagation - Nature BiotechnologySCAVENGE identifies causal variants from single-cell epigenomic data.
Source: NatureBiotech - 🏆 231. / 63 Read more »

CRISPR technology - Nature BiotechnologyRecent patents relating to CRISPR methods and compositions for gene editing and therapeutic use.
Source: NatureBiotech - 🏆 231. / 63 Read more »

Directed evolution and selection of biostable l-DNA aptamers with a mirror-image DNA polymerase - Nature BiotechnologyMirror-image PCR and l-DNA sequencing-by-synthesis enable the directed evolution and selection of functional l-DNA aptamers.
Source: NatureBiotech - 🏆 231. / 63 Read more »

Natasha Rothwell Narrates Planned Parenthood PSA: “Together, We Are a Force of Nature”The 'White Lotus' star's spot will run on television, streaming and digital platforms and is part of the organization's $12.5 million paid media campaign. Baby killers Typical hollywood liberal morality they think its cool to be rabidly in favor of terminating a babies life. They really are despicable twisted bunch with very selective ethics. Lets punish the baby for the womans carelessness. How cool. I don’t understand- since abortions only make up like 3% of their business, why is everyone so sad for PPFA?
Source: THR - 🏆 411. / 53 Read more »

Jacquemus and Mother Nature Collab on Another Stunning Runway ShowTechnically, it was a three-way collaboration with Nike: Would surely find myself Amy someday 🥲💚
Source: Fashionista_com - 🏆 474. / 51 Read more »