2026-03-16 マサチューセッツ工科大学（MIT）
＜関連情報＞
- https://news.mit.edu/2026/new-sensor-sniffs-out-pneumonia-patients-breath-0316
- https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c05948
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-020-0723-4
SERS活性プラズモンナノギャップにおける水媒介による合成呼気バイオマーカーの捕捉を介した呼気ベース診断に向けて Toward Breath-Based Diagnostics via Water-Mediated Capture of Synthetic Breath Biomarkers in SERS-Active Plasmonic Nanogaps
Aditya Garg,Marissa Morales,Aashini Shah,Daniel M. Kim,Ming Lei,Sahil Patel,Jia Dong,Seleem Badawy,Sangeeta Bhatia,and Loza F. Tadesse
Nano Letters Published: February 23, 2026
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c05948
Abstract
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are valuable health indicators, with synthetic breath biomarkers offering rapid and disease-specific diagnostics. However, their <100 ppb level exhalation requires mass spectrometry, limiting clinical integration. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) offers a portable, cost-effective alternative. Yet, detecting synthetic breath biomarkers, with inherently low Raman cross-sections, at <100 ppb remains challenging. We demonstrate SERS detection down to clinically relevant 10 ppb via water-mediated trapping in hydroxylated nanoporous silica-coated plasmonic nanogaps, using pentafluoropropylamine (PFP) as a representative synthetic breath biomarker. Uniform nanogaps, with >103 electric field enhancement, were generated between a gold film and gold–silica core–shell nanoparticle assemblies using electric field-driven evaporation. Oxygen plasma treatment hydroxylated the silica, enabling water-mediated hydrogen bonding that strengthened PFP adsorption, confirmed by density functional theory. This mechanism improved SERS sensitivity by 104-fold, enabling ppb level PFP detection in mouse bronchial fluid and establishing a VOC capturing SERS platform for breath-based diagnostics.
呼吸器疾患のための合成呼気バイオマーカーの設計 Engineering synthetic breath biomarkers for respiratory disease
Leslie W. Chan,Melodi N. Anahtar,Ta-Hsuan Ong,Kelsey E. Hern,Roderick R. Kunz &Sangeeta N. Bhatia
Nature Nanotechnology Published:20 July 2020
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-020-0723-4
Abstract
Human breath contains many volatile metabolites. However, few breath tests are currently used in the clinic to monitor disease due to bottlenecks in biomarker identification. Here we engineered breath biomarkers for respiratory disease by local delivery of protease-sensing nanoparticles to the lungs. The nanosensors shed volatile reporters upon cleavage by neutrophil elastase, an inflammation-associated protease with elevated activity in lung diseases such as bacterial infection and alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency. After intrapulmonary delivery into mouse models with acute lung inflammation, the volatile reporters are released and expelled in breath at levels detectable by mass spectrometry. These breath signals can identify diseased mice with high sensitivity as early as 10 min after nanosensor administration. Using these nanosensors, we performed serial breath tests to monitor dynamic changes in neutrophil elastase activity during lung infection and to assess the efficacy of a protease inhibitor therapy targeting neutrophil elastase for the treatment of alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.
