激情快播

Spring 2017 | By Dan Morrell

Let鈥檚 say you鈥檙e sick. It鈥檚 a fever you鈥檝e had for days. Maybe it鈥檚 a headache that is getting worse and worse. Or perhaps your vision is blurred. Some system in your body is offline, and it鈥檚 bad enough that you need professional advice.

You head to the doctor鈥檚 office, where a great hunt for the cause begins. Your temperature is taken; your blood is drawn. X-rays or maybe an MRI is ordered. So maybe more appointments, more waiting, all while whatever it was that brought you there in the first place continues unabated.

But what if there was a way to halt that hunt during the first visit to the doctor鈥檚 office? And what if the test took seconds to administer, involved no needles or claustrophobia-inducing medical equipment, gave results in milliseconds and wouldn鈥檛 tax your insurance or your wallet?

This is the 鈥淛etsonian鈥� promise of the technology being developed by Konstantin Vodopyanov, 21st Century World Class Scholars Endowed Chair in Optics and Photonics. More than a decade ago, this laser specialist saw a way to use laser technology to find instant, actionable medical clues hidden in the unseen: your breath.

激情快播 Professor Konstantin Vodopyanov is developing a new laser that鈥檚 capable of scanning for diseases as quickly and easily as scanning a barcode.聽

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Scent has a long history as a medical diagnostic tool. Before the advent of molecular evaluation or invasive techniques, ancient Chinese healers would diagnose tuberculosis via a tarlike scent it gives off. Hippocrates sniffed patients鈥� breath for a fishy odor as a way to diagnose liver failure. In the late 1700s, John Rollo, surgeon general of the British Royal Artillery, noted that diabetes sufferers exhibited 鈥渢he odor of decaying apples鈥� on their breath.

But these ancient methods have been getting a new look in the past decade. Breath tests for tuberculosis, lactose intolerance, gum disease, pneumonia and even some forms of cancer have been the subject of academic studies or even released to the market. Canine disease detection 鈥� once anecdotal evidence 鈥� has picked up academic acolytes and seen real-world applications, with dogs now being trained to paw their diabetic owners before a meter reading even shows danger.

The idea first hit Vodopyanov鈥檚 radar in 2000, when he was hired by the California startup Picarro 鈥� a group of young Stanford Ph.D.s who were trying to develop a breath analysis test for ulcers. Vodopyanov鈥檚 charge was building a laser that would be specifically tuned to find the molecules indicative of the stomach sores.

He had studied physics as a student in Moscow, eventually finding a passion for lasers. 鈥淚 started building my own laser on the first day of my master鈥檚 program,鈥� Vodopyanov says 鈥� everything from the electrical engineering of the circuits to aligning the lenses and detectors. 鈥淎t first, it was one day a week. Then two days a week. Then three days a week,鈥� he says with a laugh. He was hooked.

For years, Vodopyanov鈥檚 career alternated between the academic world and the private sector. After 14 years in teaching posts in Russia, Germany and the U.K., in 1999 he took a job at a company that was developing crystal technology for use in remote-sensing operations. Picarro was his next job, and he鈥檇 stay there for three years before heading to Stanford to do research.

But his experience at Picarro 鈥� seeing the potential for biomedical applications of his laser work 鈥� stuck with him. Two years later, in 2005, the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to researchers who found that short pulses of laser light would enable highly precise molecular measurements, and Vodopyanov had what he calls 鈥渉is great inspiration.鈥� It was a chance to expand beyond the startup鈥檚 limited focus. He began working on a new kind of laser 鈥� one that wouldn鈥檛 just try to find one molecule in someone鈥檚 breath but all of them.

Molecules in breath can arrive there from anywhere in the body. They all use the same public transportation system: your blood. Alcohol is a good example. It travels from your mouth to your stomach, where it is absorbed into the bloodstream. When the blood circulates to the lungs, it is exchanged with air and exhaled. (鈥淧eople think Breathalyzers are measuring the amount of alcohol in the stomach,鈥� says Vodopyanov, so they鈥檒l try 鈥� in vain 鈥� to beat police Breathalyzers by 鈥渆ating crazy foods.鈥�) The process for cancers involves a different, often more circuitous route, but the exchange in the lungs is the same.

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In previous methods of detection 鈥� like the one employed at Picarro 鈥� laser wavelengths were tuned to find a specific molecule. So it would help only if you knew you were looking for a specific type of disease. Vodopyanov uses the analogy of a checkout line at the grocery store: Every molecule has a bar code. The existing technology was using a scanner set to read just one of them. Vodopyanov spent the years after the Nobel announcement experimenting with how to develop a scanner that could read all of the bar codes at once.

By 2009, he had a breakthrough. After making a quick study of the biology involved 鈥� 鈥渢hat鈥檚 the most fun, when you learn something new鈥� 鈥� he gave his first presentation at a breath analysis conference in 2010 to a warm reception. When he was hired by 激情快播 in 2013, it was to continue his biomedical research.

These ideas have moved beyond theory. He and his colleagues are working on a prototype for a point-of-care device: The patient exhales in a tube, the doctor pushes a button to start the laser identification, and the measurements are fed into a computer for instant analysis.

鈥淸It takes] maybe a millisecond,鈥� Vodopyanov says. (The tech seems far-fetched in context, but it鈥檚 actually pretty commonplace, he says. Your smartphone or social network already likely has some form of facial recognition, analyzing millions of pixels in less than a second. 鈥淭his does the same thing, just in two dimensions.鈥�)

Then, a bit of code will translate those readings into coherent medical notes 鈥� warnings, low counts, telltale signs. It鈥檚 the high-tech equivalent of the dog pawing its diabetic owner. 鈥淏ut the dogs, they鈥檙e binary. It鈥檚 just a 鈥榶es, something is wrong鈥� or 鈥榥o, it isn鈥檛,鈥� 鈥� he says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e just trying to outperform dogs.鈥�

It鈥檚 a modest appraisal that he delivers with a laugh, but he readily offers the truth about the work: 鈥淲e鈥檙e the only lab in the world that can do what we鈥檙e doing.鈥�

And while biomedical research has been an important first application, the device has the potential for broader impact. 鈥淭his will prove to be a very important discovery,鈥� says Sergey Mirov, a physics professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and longtime Vodopyanov collaborator. Being able to rapidly detect chemical composition shows promise for everything from environmental monitoring to detecting oil pipe leaks. As a prototype, Mirov says, this can go anywhere 鈥� dentist offices, airplanes, the space station. 鈥淚t can be really, really global.鈥�

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The prototype refinement is ongoing. Vodopyanov makes the comparison between his lab鈥檚 current work and that of a solar cell engineer. 鈥淸Engineers] are focused on improving efficiency 鈥� on making a better solar cell,鈥� he says. 鈥淪ame with us.鈥� He wants the prototype to be more sensitive, more efficient, maybe even shrunk to the size of an iPhone. There鈥檚 much to be done.

It鈥檚 hard not to daydream about the potential impact though. Think of the cost savings to patients spared expensive but irrelevant tests. And think of how useful, Vodopyanov says, this could be in developing countries, where hospitals and diagnostic tools are inaccessible to millions. 鈥淲e are just on the cutting edge,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut if we鈥檙e successful, it is clear that this would be very widely used.鈥�

Asked how long it will be until the prototype is unveiled, Vodopyanov estimates a year or so. 鈥淚t is like approaching the Wright brothers after their first flight and asking, 鈥極K, how soon until we can load that with 300 people and fly it around the world?鈥� We just can鈥檛 be sure. But we鈥檙e ahead of the crowd.鈥�