Chemiresistive Sensor Array with Nanostructured Interfaces for Detection of Human Breaths with Simulated Lung Cancer Breath VOCs

Timely screening of lung cancer represents a challenging task for early diagnosis and treatment, which calls for reliable, low-cost, and noninvasive detection tools. One type of promising tools for early-stage cancer detection is breath analyzers or sensors that detect breath volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as biomarkers in exhaled breaths. However, a major challenge is the lack of effective integration of the different sensor system components toward the desired portability, sensitivity, selectivity, and durability for many of the current breath sensors. In this report, we demonstrate herein a portable and wireless breath sensor testing system integrated with sensor electronics, breath sampling, data processing, and sensor arrays derived from nanoparticle-structured chemiresistive sensing interfaces for detection of VOCs relevant to lung cancer biomarkers in human breaths. In addition to showing the sensor viability for the targeted application by theoretical simulations of chemiresistive sensor array responses to the simulated VOCs in human breaths, the sensor system was tested experimentally with different combinations of VOCs and human breath samples spiked with lung cancer-specific VOCs. The sensor array exhibits high sensitivity to lung cancer VOC biomarkers and mixtures, with a limit of detection as low as 6 ppb. The results from testing the sensor array system in detecting breath samples with simulated lung cancer VOC constituents have demonstrated an excellent recognition rate in discriminating healthy human breath samples and those with lung cancer VOCs. The recognition statistics were analyzed, showing the potential viability and optimization toward achieving the desired sensitivity, selectivity, and accuracy in the breath screening of lung cancer.

Automated summary

Timely screening of lung cancer is challenging and requires reliable, low-cost, and noninvasive tools. Breath analyzers that detect VOCs as biomarkers offer promise, but integrating the different sensor system components for portability and sensitivity is a major challenge. This study presents a portable and wireless breath sensor system that integrates sensor electronics, breath sampling, data processing, and nanoparticle-structured chemiresistive sensor arrays for detecting lung cancer biomarkers in human breaths.