Nanoscale Sensor Technologies for Disease Detection via Volatolomics

Abstract

The detection of many diseases is missed because of delayed diagnoses or the low efficacy of some treatments. This emphasizes the urgent need for inexpensive and minimally invasive technologies that would allow efficient early detection, stratifying the population for personalized therapy, and improving the efficacy of rapid bed-side assessment of treatment. An emerging approach that has a high potential to fulfill these needs is based on so-called "volatolomics", namely, chemical processes involving profiles of highly volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from body fluids, including breath, skin, urine and blood. This article presents a didactic review of some of the main advances related to the use of nanomaterial-based solid-state and flexible sensors, and related artificially intelligent sensing arrays for the detection and monitoring of disease with volatolomics. The article attempts to review the technological gaps and confounding factors related to VOC testing. Different ways to choose nanomaterial-based sensors are discussed, while considering the profiles of targeted volatile markers and possible limitations of applying the sensing approach. Perspectives for taking volatolomics to a new level in the field of diagnostics are highlighted.

Self-Healable Sensors Based Nanoparticles for Detecting Physiological Markers via Skin and Breath: Toward Disease Prevention via Wearable Devices

“…3,7 To make this vision a reality a platform of smart flexible sensors has to be developed and implemented. 3 Among many kinds of sensing schemes, [25][26][27][28][29][30] flexible chemical sensor matrices based on molecularly-modified gold nanoparticles (GNPs) 14,[31][32][33][34] are likely to become realistic wearable devices for health monitoring of VOCs from the skin and breath; they are printable, small, easy-to-use, require only low voltage for operation, and are inexpensive.…”

“…A promising approach for monitoring the physiological parameters of healthy people is based on the continuous (or frequent) detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] and/or pressure pulses that are derived from human breath/skin, along with monitoring of heart-beat and breath rate, inter alia. 21,22 This approach has the potential to be painless, easy-to-perform, inexpensive and give results that can be available immediately for therapeutic assessment/diagnosis.…”

Gas-Sensitive Field-Effect Transistor Incorporating Polymer Layer and Porous Metal Electrode in the Gate Structure

“…Sensors for gases and vapors of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have been intensively studied for applications in fields such as disease diagnosis (1)(2)(3) and environmental monitoring related to industrial safety and home security. (4) Field-effect transistor (FET)-based sensors have also been widely studied for gas sensing applications.…”

“…(11,12) The combination of cross-reactive sensing with pattern recognition methods is a promising way to identify gaseous target analytes and estimate their concentrations. (3,(13)(14)(15)(16) Cross-reactive sensor arrays used for this purpose require broadly responsive sensors with differentiated response profiles. (3) The obtained signals can then be extracted by preprocessing before the computational processing.…”

“…(3,(13)(14)(15)(16) Cross-reactive sensor arrays used for this purpose require broadly responsive sensors with differentiated response profiles. (3) The obtained signals can then be extracted by preprocessing before the computational processing. (13)(14)(15)(16) FET-based sensors can be downsized and integrated into sensor arrays by standard semiconductor processes, which makes them an ideal platform for crossreactive sensing systems.…”