Biomimetic nose sniffs out disease

Filed in archive Biotech on May 17, 2006

Modern-day doctors may soon start using smell to detect the early warning signs of different illnesses thanks to technology that replicates - and improves upon - the human olfactory system thanks to tiny bioelectronic sensors, says Information Society Technologies.

The new interdisciplinary technology approach, developed and tested by researchers in Spain, France and Italy, will ultimately lead to electronic noses based on natural olfactory receptors that could be used not only in healthcare but also in agriculture, industry, environmental protection or security.

"The potential uses of smell technology are endless," notes Josep Samitier, the coordinator of the SPOT-NOSED project that developed nanobiosensors to mimic the way human and animal noses respond to different odors.

This new nose biosensor is unusual in how it's made. By placing a layer of proteins that constitute the olfactory receptors in animal noses on a microelectrode and measuring the reaction when the proteins come into contact with different odorants, the system is capable of detecting odorants at concentrations that would be imperceptible to humans.

"Our tests showed that the nanobiosensors will react to a few molecules of odorant with a very high degree of accuracy. Some of the results of the trials surpassed even our expectations," Samitier says. These tiny bioelectronic sensors, he says, represent a 'major leap forward' in smell technology and a clear example of a biomimetic devices obtained by converging Nano-Bio-Info technologies. (photo Information Society Technologies)