Instrumentation for Monitoring Breath Biomarkers for Diagnosis of Health, Condition, Toxic Exposure, and Disease

Detecting the presence and levels of endogenously produced molecules in expired breath is a promising technology with potential for non-invasive monitoring of warfighter health, physiologic condition, and toxin/radiation exposure. Until now, exploiting this potential has been limited by the lack of a suitable platform technology for easy, rapid, reliable and versatile breath analysis measurements. To address this need, Physical Sciences Inc. in collaboration with our academic research partner, Johns Hopkins University, proposes to develop a compact, portable, and high sensitivity system for non-invasive, real-time monitoring of normal and abnormal human physiology via human breath analysis. The breath analysis system we propose to develop will employ photonic biosensor platform technology based on the marriage of the very latest in tunable, mid-wave IR semiconductor laser technology and cavity-enhanced spectroscopy for ultra-sensitive absorption measurements. The proposed instrument will enable rapid, reliable and real-time measurements of trace levels of selected biomarker gases in exhaled breath. The Phase I goal is to demonstrate the feasibility of developing a compact, transportable, dual-laser module capable of real-time monitoring of breath ethane and carbon monoxide. Breath ethane is a key biomarker of oxidative stress status (OSS) and breath carbon monoxide a biomarker of OS response.