Cancer and Bombs Sensed by Artificial Nose

MIT researchers have recently achieved the ability of mass-producing the receptors humans use to detect odors. This could potentially render drug and bomb - sniffing dogs obsolete and even sniff out certain cancers (lung, bladder, skin) that produce odors in their early stages. The project has been named RealNose and, led by Shuguang Zhang, has been promised a large amount of funding. Zhang's research team has spent years isolating and purifying receptor proteins responsible for the sense of smell. These receptors can then be used to build sensor devices with quite a range of possibilities. There is much controversy surrounding the project, though, because no one is really sure how the receptors interact with and recognize specific odor molecules, and the reality of making an artificial nose will require much more work.

I found this article interesting because I've never heard of a smell-based biosensing device - there are so many possibilities that could be done with this. In particular, a device that is able to detect early stage cancer in a noninvasive fashion could save millions of lives in the future.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/081006-artificial-nose.html

Aubrey Hildebrandt