Breathing your way to better health

Dogs have up to 300 million olfactory receptor neurons in their nose, more than 60 times than a human being. They’ve been trained to smell changes in blood pressure and glucose levels, detect oncoming seizures or migraines, and even identify potential cancer.

Masoud Agah, the Virginia Microelectronics Consortium Professor for the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is working to give everyone that same sniffing power in the palm of their hands with his newest conceptual patent for the Personalized Integrated Mobile Exhalation Decoder (PIMED).

The device has the potential to transform the way we detect and diagnose disease.  For instance, it could offer an instantaneous diagnosis of kidney disease or diabetes via ketones, or be built into a small check-up station similar to public blood pressure cuffs at pharmacies. 

“The main benefit of this method is that it’s noninvasive. You can do it at home or even in a clinic,” said Agah, executive director for the Virginia Alliance for Semiconductor Technology (VAST). “It doesn’t require sophisticated laboratories to analyze results. So much travel time, doctor’s visits, etc., can be saved. That’s how I look at these technologies, as early warning instruments that can reduce the hassle put on individuals, on patients, and on medical infrastructure as well.”

Complex compounds separated simply

The patent, US-12442799, covers a portable device for analyzing volatile organic compounds in a person's breath and a microelectromechanical (MEMS) sample collector. The sample collector, powered by a patent-protected “sniffer on a chip,” takes in the breath and, using an absorbing agent, picks up the components for identification by the analyzer.

“We have some of the best microelectromechanical separation chips in the world,” Agah said. “They’re the functional units of a micro-scale or chip-scale gas chromatograph, which we can then put into a complex system, something small and disposable enough to monitor the status of your health on a regular basis.”

Unlike single-focused breathalyzers that can only detect blood alcohol content, the PIMED uses MEMS chips in stacks, or separation columns, to separate out the compounds. In laboratory-scale gas chromatographs, the analyzing components are the size of dinner plates. With MEMS chips, the separation columns are the size of a quarter.

“That’s where this patent comes into play. We’re focused on creating Cluster-Columns using MEMS chips,” said John Michalek, chief executive officer of Zebra Analytix, a research and development company focused on miniaturizing analytical technology, and Agah’s longtime collaborator. “They’re so small, which means we can connect multiple columns in different combinations. It allows us to get better separation than you could with large machines, and in some cases, the combination of columns eliminates the need for mass spectrometry. Now, we can decrease the overall cost because there’s less material, decreased lab overhead, lower energy consumption, etc. So this is actually pretty disruptive.”

Michalek and Agah, who serves as the chief technical officer at Zebra Analytix, have been working on gas chromatography projects for more than a decade. One of their most recent projects, the size-particle odor chromatograph kernel funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, centers on the miniaturization of gas chromatograph technology, shrinking mass spectrometers to the size of a backpack.

Masoud, along with other collaborators, also holds the patent for Functionalized Metal Oxides as a Stationary Phase and a surface template for Micro Gas Chromatography Separation Columns, which helped provide a foundation for the decoder.

With a conceptual patent in hand, Agah and Michalek plan to take the breathalyzer from the literal drawing board to real-world prototypes. They have multiple markets in mind, but their collective focus remains the health space, targeting early diagnosis or detection of disease. 

Related articles