(295i) Health Monitoring with Breath Sensors and Devices

Breath sensors can revolutionize medical diagnostics by on-demand detection and monitoring of health parameters in a non-invasive and personalized fashion. Despite extensive research for more than two decades, however, only few breath sensors have been translated into clinical practice.[1] While nanotechnology offers strategies to design transducers (e.g., plasmonic or chemoresistive nanoparticles) that can quantify critical compounds at sufficiently low concentrations, selectivity and reversibility remain contradictory constraints. Here, I will discuss our recent advances on the design of nanostructured breath sensors that monitor biomarkers continuously at high accuracy. This has been enabled by optimizing receptors and transducers for selective and reversible interaction for various molecule types. To demonstrate the immediate practical impact, I will present continuous sensing of breath acetone[2,3] in health and diabetes[4] that is currently evaluated in clinical trials.

[1] Güntner, A. T.; Abegg, S.; Konigstein, K.; Gerber, P. A.; Schmidt-Trucksass, A.; Pratsinis, S. E., ACS Sens 2019, 4 (2), 268-280.
[2] Güntner, A. T.; Sievi, N. A.; Theodore, S. J.; Gulich, T.; Kohler, M.; Pratsinis, S. E., Anal. Chem. 2017, 89 (19), 10578-10584.
[3] Weber, I. C.; Derron, N.; Königstein, K.; Gerber, P. A.; Güntner, A. T.; Pratsinis, S. E., Small Science 2021, 1 (4), 2100004.
[4] Güntner, A. T.; Weber, I. C.; Schon, S.; Pratsinis, S. E.; Gerber, P. A., Sens. Actuators B 2022, 367, 132182.