I-Corps Teams: Development of Noninvasive Diabetes Breath Sensors

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project to enable a non-invasive, simple and portable monitoring blood glucose levels from human breath. This project will provide the commercialization training to graduate students and enhance students learning on commercialization skills. As a potential societal impact, this innovation will enhance the quality of life, by using noninvasive breath sensors for the recognition of human blood glucose level for diabetics. New discoveries will be disseminated through presentations, workshops, partnerships, and potential technology transfer to a start-up company. Industrial collaborators from various companies will help translate this innovation into engineering practice. More than 100 people will be outreached about the innovations in the noninvasive diabetes sensors during the interview process.This I-Corps project is to conduct market analysis and customer interviews for commercializing a noninvasive breath biosensor for detecting acetone in exhaled breath for the recognition of human blood glucose level. The molecular imprinted layer improved the selectivity of the sensors by allowing the specific molecule to be exposed into the sensor. The acetone-imprinted sensor shows a wide range of linear relationship with the growth of the acetone concentrations in the range of 0-10 ppm at a sensitivity about 15 Ω/ppm. This sensor has the following advantages over the existing diabetes sensors in the market. This sensor has a linear gas response to acetone from 0.9 ppm to 10 ppm, which leads to accurate detection of acetone concentration in breath of patients with diabetes (usually in the range of 1.7 ppm to 3.7 ppm). This sensor demonstrates high stability, improved selectivity, and high sensitivity for acetone from different gas molecules such as moisture, ethanol, etc. This sensor has a small size that can fit in a pocket. Patients with diabetes can conveniently and discretely carry the sensor for real-time detection of acetone in exhaled breath to recognize human blood glucose level and help determine a patient?s insulin needs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.