Electronic Noses Can Sniff Diseases

Hossam Haick, a professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, has developed a device known as the artificial nose. What is incredible about this nose is that it has the ability to smell cancer from a patient's breath sample. It can even tell you what kind of cancer the person has, whether it be lung, breast, prostate, head/neck tumors, or even non-small cell versus small cell cancer.

Image from The Scientist

The artificial nose does this by processing the volatile organic compounds of a cancer patients breath and compares it to the composition of a healthy person's breath. It has been discovered that different cancers emit different compounds and therefore change the composition of each patients breathe depending on what kind of cancer they have. Haick is very hopeful about this new technology because it is a very simple, inexpensive, non-evasive way to detect cancer.

Image from Google Images

Haick's cancer-detecting artificial nose is still in clinical trials. However, the French company Alpha MOS is producing artificial noses that test for quality control in the food and beverage industry, as well as for detecting contaminants in plastics and packaging manufacturing, for flavor, and for perfume development.

I found this article extremely interesting because, as a person with year-round allergies, sometimes I wish I had a different nose I could snap on to be able to smell again! The fact that scientists out there are doing just that and giving them the ability is detect diseases is absolutely mind blowing to me. With cancer recently taking the lead as the #1 cause of death in America, this could be such a huge step forward to reducing these numbers if we can start to detect cancers early enough at a cheap cost. The greatest part of this is how non-evasive it is; in my mind, I can't see anyone saying they wouldn't try this test as a potential cancer detector. This is a great achievement in the cancer field. With continued research, imagine what scientists will be able to sniff out in the upcoming years..

Article: Get a Whiff of This
Written by: Kerry Grens
http://the-scientist.com/2012/09/01/get-a-whiff-of-this/