Sitex 45 Proiect TROPSENSE

TROPSENSE

Development of a non-invasive breath test for early diagnosis of tropical diseases.

2015-2018

Project

Tropical illnesses are frequent infections in tropical and subtropical regions from Africa, Asia and America, that affect specially to low-income persons in developing countries, while in Europe only affect to turist that travel to these zones. The study is focused to investigate hidatidosis, leishmaniosis and dengue, all of them included in the 17 deseases not attended by the World Health Organisation.
The research will be based in analysis of breath samples, easy to obtain and don´t represent any discomfort or risk for the pacient´s health. For this project will be taken samples from pacients already diagnosticated with one of these illnesses and from pacients with other tropical diseases to establish the control group. Analysis will be done through chemical analytic processes to identify biomarkers. After this will be developed chemical steam sensors with hight affinity, selecting the most appropiate sensible nanomaterials. Researchers will analyse different techniques (resistive sensors, transistors, sensors to mesure changes in weight, infrared spectroscopy, etc) and finally will be developed one integrated prototype using the best techniques. During the last six months the prototype will be tested in different hospitals from Africa and America.

General objectives

1. To develop a non-invasive and safely methodology for the early and fast diagnosis of tropical deseases
2. The simptoms of these diseases are difficult to identify. The main project´s objective is to obtain a fast tool, inexpensive, portable, non-invasive and easy to use for the diagnosis of these deseases.