This is something from the future when people read the headlines as A Disease Breathalyzer, which sounds something which could be still in its concept stages. But it is not, as Owlstone Medical has found this mighty useful product. Owlstone Medical was into this research for a few years into conceptualizing and creating the Breath Biopsy.
Close to billions would be saved on diagnosis expenditure because these devices could save many thousand people around the world in the healthcare industry. The device diagnoses cancer, inflammatory diseases and other infectious diseases with precision with just a single breath.
At present Owlstone Medical are also developing tests to help diagnose lung and colorectal cancer which are considered as the killers when it comes to cancer and is running on trials with the NHS and Cancer Research UK. The company also supplies Breath Biopsy products and services to academic, clinical and pharma partners who want to develop breath-based diagnostics for their applications.
The Important Challenges
The Breath Biopsy is a super innovation which combines technology and medical science. The most crucial challenge Owlstone Medical faced is that since everyone’s breath is different, the device must analyze the difference in their breath and identify whether there are actual changes in the body. Since the VOCs create an electric current in the breathalyzer, collecting a lot of data infused with medical excellence is very much mandatory to develop a device providing accurate information of the disease present in the body.
Breath Biopsy Conceptualization
When a foreign substance enters our body which affects the health of the body, there would be some definitive changes in the human’s metabolism. The entire metabolism is changed because of alteration in the patterns of volatile metabolites exhaled through the patient’s breath is diagnosed just with a single breath through the disease breathalyzer.
The complex changes because of the chemical transformation that happens in the system take place within the cells of the living organism and sustain life called as metabolism. A countless amount of small and intermediate molecules present in the organisms are known as metabolites.
The metabolites are present in all living systems, the biochemical name for metabolites are called metabolome. Any changes in the human body can be seen in the metabolome making it an essential marker for diseases. The metabolites are the substance which gives precise information about the different changes in different conditions in the human body.
Construction
The breathalyzer consists of two Nano layers, one of them is made up of carbon, and the other is not. The non-carbon layer contains modified gold nanoparticles and a series of nanotubes both capable of conducting electricity.
The carbon Nano layer is the sensing layer which analyzes the VOCs mentioned earlier. The first working of the breathalyzer is to determine which VOCs were present by measuring the resistance.
How does the Breath Biopsy Diagnose
The breath analyzer collects non-invasive metabolites and analyses immediately of the volatile fraction of metabolites from the patient’s breath. If there are a real amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), it immediately shows in the biochemical activity and also in the cells and tissues of the human body. The VOCs also contain specific biomarkers which are very much to characterize different disease processes and define an accurate treatment that must be followed for the patient.
When the diffusion of metabolic volatiles takes place in the blood which is later made to the lungs through the air, the air exhaled exhibits VOCs from the human system in the local airways tissue. The breath biopsy would be fast in analyzing the threat in the human body because it is very much sensitive to pulmonary conditions like asthma, COPD, lung cancer and different other problems in the body.
The product is almost complete of its research and would be ready for deployment anytime soon. The entire world would be consuming a disease breathalyzer to diagnose every critical disease that would allow patients to save a lot on diagnosis in the nearby future.
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