ISENSE, LLC — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: NIEHS

Description

PROJECT SUMMARY ABSTRACT This application seeks to develop a non invasive and practical optical sensor technology to monitor and quantify oxidative health Oxidative stress OS is a biochemical imbalance in which production of reactive oxygen species exceeds the system s antioxidant capacity Failure to repair or contain cumulative oxidative damage is likely responsible for the pathogenesis of many acute and chronic illnesses including cardiovascular and kidney disease inflammatory responses neurodegenerative disorders and carcinogenesis A noninvasive inexpensive robust sensor capable of evaluating and monitoring systemic oxidative stress would be a tool of great value to public health officials clinicians and individual consumers since many environmental conditions and xenobiotics e g urban air pollution heavy metal contamination endocrine disrupting compounds pesticides and industrial chemicals trigger oxidative stress Because there is no universal biomarker for OS and there are many potential target molecules it s critical to develop a system that is capable of detecting many chemical components and creating a chemical fingerprint that reflects alterations in key pathways associated with environmental stressors iSense LLC has developed a novel sensor array that can detect a vast library of volatile compounds across multiple chemical moieties at ppb level concentrations The technology is rapid inexpensive and capable of distinguishing between single analytes and complex mixtures Our breath sensor has been used to detect the biosignature of lung cancer patients and differentiate between different types of lung cancer in humans Phase I of this project will test improve and optimize this breath analysis technology towards the detection and identification of key biomarkers of oxidative stress Successful completion of this work will establish the fundamental chemistry necessary to develop a device to measure and understand markers of environmental exposure PROJECT NARRATIVE The proposed research will develop and test a novel array based optical sensor for the detection and identification of biomarkers of oxidative stress in exhaled breath If successful the proposed effort will yield technology to generate a chemical fingerprint for measurement of oxidative stress resulting from environmental toxicants