Engineered olfactory system for in vitro artificial nose

The engineered biomimetic sensors can not only realize the action of organs,but also combine functional materials as in vitro organs by simulating the response of biological organs to different environmental signals.Artificial nose is a concept proposed by imitating biological olfactory system,simulating olfactory nerve cells,olfactory bulb and olfactory cortex through different materials to realize olfactory function.The sensor array used to sense external gas stimulation can be analyzed based on different recognition principles through different original signals such as optics,electricity,electrochemistry and bioelectricity.Furthermore,combined with pattern recognition and microarray technology,artificial nose can be highly integrated with biocompatible and other important properties to achieve in vitro application.The design principle and necessary components of artificial nose are introduced in this paper including sensing structure,recognition system and functional module.At the same time,the potential development prospects of molecular recognition technology,polymer-based materials and microarray integration in artificial nose are prospected.

Colorimetric Artificial Nose for Identification of Breath Volatile Organic Compounds of Patients with Lung Cancer

A novel and highly sensitive colorimetric sensor array was developed for the detection and identification of breath volatile organic compounds（VOCs） of patients with lung cancer.Employing dimeric metalloporphyrins,metallosalphen complexes,and chemically responsive dyes as the sensing elements,the developed sensor array of artificial nose shows a unique pattern of colorific changes upon its exposure to eight less-reactive VOCs and their mixture gas at a concentration of 735 nmol/L within 3 min.Potential of quantitative analysis of VOCs samples was proved.A good linear relationship of 490-3675 nmol/L was obtained for benzene vapor with a detection limit of 49 nmol/L（S/N=3）.Data analysis was carried out by Hierarchical cluster analysis（HCA） and principal component analysis（PCA）.Each category of breath VOCs clusters together in the PCA score plot.No errors in classification by HCA were observed in 45 trials.Additionaly,the colorimetric sensor array showed good reproducibility under the cyclic sensing experiments.These results demonstrate that the developed colorimetric artificial nose system is an excellent sensing platform for the identification and quantitative analysis of breath VOCs of patients with lung cancer.