cfaed Seminar Series

Abstract:

Medical evaluation for early detection of a disease is required to reveal groups of individuals from the general population in whom the likelihood of the disease is increased and who could benefit from further medical evaluation. The ideal medical evaluation is high-accuracy, low-cost, non-invasive, easily repeatable, effortlessly operated by a lay-person and has minimal impact on the person’s daily activities. In our research, we tackle these requirements by the development of novel solid-state and self-healable flexible1 devices/sensors that are based on advanced functional materials as well as electronic sensory nanoarrays for profiling volatile biomarkers that are emitted from cells in the affected area and that can be detected either via the exhaled breath or from the skin, without going invasively into the human body. Our results show that an interaction between the volatile biomarkers emitted from breath / skin sample(s) and the smart nanoarray can be recorded, stored and pre-processed by tailor-made lab-on-chip, and then the relevant electrical signals can transferred wirelessly to an external server. Statistical pattern recognition methods are then applied on the received data and a clinical report including the screening results is sent back to the designated receiver (e.g., specialist, family doctor) in case of positive result is revealed. The developed nanoarrays have been put into practical evaluation in more than 20 hospitals worldwide. The results of this clinical evaluation have evidenced the ability of the combined diagnostic technology to detect and discriminate between various types of cancers, chronic and acute kidney disease, hepatic disease, pulmonary arterial hypertension and more, with accuracies that range between 84-98%. For many disease states, the technology developed was able to discriminate even between sub-categories of a specific disease as well as between volatile organic compounds that are associated with genetic mutations of important disease states (P53, K-RAS, EGFR, and ALK), aspects that aid in providing personalized diagnosis and help tailor personalized treatment. The development and the use of these systems to identify high-risk groups for specific diseases and genetic mutations and to monitor the therapy provided to people affected by that disease will be presented and discussed.