An artificial intelligence (AI) platform developed by a British health tech business can analyze MRI data to look for early signs of sickness. The company's strategy, which employs imaging biomarkers, promises better disease diagnosis and treatment decision-making.

Twinn Health claims to be advancing longevity and preventive healthcare thanks to a $500 million venture capital fund from Saudi Aramco.

Using MRI technology in the medical field is nothing new. Developments in AI have made it easier to identify specific disorders in MRI scans. Their wider applicability in disease detection and lengthening lifespan is still in its infancy.

“Usually, when you do an MRI today, it’s one MRI scan for one single diagnosis,” Wareed Alenaini, founder and CEO of Twinn Health, explains in an interview with Longevity Technology, citing kidney stones as an example.

“You do the MRI. The doctor looks at the kidney stones, writes the report, and then the scan data gets archived, and will probably never be checked again,” Alenaini continues. “That’s where Twinn comes in: we’re extracting additional insights from MRI scans that may not have been the primary focus of the physician.”

By combining MRI and AI, Twinn Health hopes to usher in a new era in healthcare by identifying and treating age-related disorders at an early stage. The company's aggressive strategy calls for addressing liver disease and age-related weakness.

“We’re using technology to make chronic disease prevention scalable,” Alenaini told the website, which is published by First Longevity and backed by Marco Polo Securities.

Alenaini, a Saudi native with a doctorate in bioimaging from Imperial College London, developed the idea for Twinn Health while researching the patterns of the human body in MRI pictures and their relationship to illness progression.

Twinn's primary area of interest is metabolic disease, which is a trifecta of diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. Because of how susceptible these disorders make people are to serious health problems like coronary heart disease and stroke. Twinn's AI platform examines MRI pictures for potentially dangerous hidden fatty deposits surrounding organs, which are an important sign of heart disease even in healthy people.

Alenaini asserted initial tests had produced encouraging findings, with a 95% accuracy rate in 2021, which were later corroborated by actual data and NHS doctors in the UK in 2022.

Alenaini claims that Twinn's patented artificial intelligence algorithm can predict metabolic abnormalities up to a half-decade in advance.

Alenaini told Longevity Technology that the company aims to hold four additional patents, address three more conditions, and amass a million data points to showcase their scalability and accessibility.

Twinn's idea is completely in line with the growing global interest in longevity.

“As the longevity field evolves and with the emergence of more healthy longevity clinics, we see ourselves as the most accurate diagnostic platform that can support this,” she said. “We are currently focusing on getting FDA approval for the American market, but our next focus will be the Middle East because we have seen a very significant push into longevity in that part of the world.”

Future disease targets include age-related frailty (sarcopenia) and liver disease.
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Twinn Health is currently looking for more funding as it aims to expand into more illness indications. Early funding efforts were concentrated on metabolic disease, but the company is now prepared to expand into additional disease pathways, further solidifying its dedication to longevity.

In a significant leap forward for wearable technology, a team of researchers at Stanford University has made remarkable progress in the development of electronic skin that possesses the ability to sense touch. This innovation has the potential to revolutionize industries ranging from healthcare to robotics, opening up new possibilities for human-machine interaction and sensory augmentation.

The electronic skin, known as e-skin, mimics the sensory capabilities of human skin by integrating pressure sensors, stretchable circuitry, and a sophisticated neural network. The team accomplished this feat by combining advanced materials, flexible electronics, and machine learning algorithms. The result is a thin, flexible, and highly sensitive e-skin that can accurately perceive and respond to different levels of pressure and touch.

“We were inspired by the natural system and wanted to mimic it,” said Weichen Wang, whose team published its success in the journal Science. “Maybe we can someday help patients to not only restore motor function but also restore their sensations.”

One of the key advantages of this e-skin technology is its potential applications in prosthetics and healthcare. By incorporating this electronic skin into prosthetic limbs, individuals with limb loss or impairment can regain a sense of touch and better interact with their environment. This advancement holds great promise in improving the quality of life for amputees and enhancing their overall mobility and dexterity.

Professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University in Boston Ravinder Dahiya is also researching the use of flexible electronics to create artificial skin. "If you pick up a glass of beer and you can't sense that it's not cold, then you won't get the right taste," he said.

Beyond healthcare, the Stanford team's electronic skin can also have a transformative impact on the field of robotics. Robots equipped with such touch-sensing capabilities can interact with objects and humans more intuitively and safely. This development paves the way for advancements in industrial automation, collaborative robotics, and human-robot interfaces, making robots more adaptable and capable of performing delicate tasks with precision.

The team's accomplishment at Stanford highlights the power of interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. By combining expertise from various fields such as materials science, electrical engineering, and computer science, they have pushed the boundaries of what is possible in wearable technology. This breakthrough in electronic skin underscores the importance of fostering cross-disciplinary partnerships to tackle complex challenges and drive technological advancements.

This research, according to Joe McTernan of the American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association, stimulates technical improvements that might one day give amputees real-time biofeedback.

“Although this skin technology is fairly new, there has been significant research and development in recent years that have focused on creating a positive tactile experience for the patient,” he said.

Alejandro Carnicer-Lombarte, a bioelectronics researcher from the University of Cambridge, told the journal Nature that the Stanford team's closed-loop system, which links sensation to muscle action, is "very exciting...very much a proof of concept."

According to him, most researchers in the field of artificial prostheses focus on certain parts. “Combining those things, in sequence, is not trivial.”
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As the potential of e-skin continues to be explored and refined, it holds immense promise for the future. Imagine a world where wearable devices can seamlessly interact with users, robots could possess a sense of touch, and virtual reality becomes more immersive through haptic feedback. The Stanford team's pioneering work brings us closer to that reality, demonstrating the immense potential of electronic skin and its transformative impact across industries.

The health functions of the Apple Watch are in the news again and are said to have saved at least two lives—one in Minnesota and one in Ohio. The feature taking the spotlight was Fall Detection.

Apple Watch user Michael Brodkorb was struck by a car in Minnesota before it fled the scene. When he could not react, his Apple Watch used Fall Detection to identify the impact and called 911. "I was just shocked," he said. "I mean, just the sheer force of what it's like to get hit by a vehicle."

Besides getting fast emergency response help, the Fall Detection feature warned his wife and kids. He ended up with rib and tailbone injuries. "It absolutely is a life-saving tool," Brodkorb said.

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, responded to an email Brodkorb sent to him, wishing him a swift recovery.

William Fryer, 83, of Cincinnati, was strolling along the Ohio River Trail when he fell. There was nobody nearby, but his Apple Watch saw the fall, alerted his daughter, and phoned emergency personnel.

He was found by Cincinnati police, who then had paramedics take him to the hospital. The huge blood clot that caused his fall was ultimately discovered by X-rays, although the symptoms of the blood clot were unusual because they went unnoticed. Fryer had the clot removed and expressed his gratitude that his Apple Watch had called for help.
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Opening the Apple Watch iPhone app, selecting Emergency SOS, then turning on the Fall Detection option will enable the Apple Watch's fall detection capability. For Apple Watch owners over 55, Fall Detection is turned on by default; however, younger Apple Watch owners can also activate it.

The way we construct homes, cars, and even food is changing thanks to 3D printers. They may alter how transplant patients receive new organs in part because of researchers at Stanford University. Their innovative method might eventually enable the printing of organs from the patient’s own cells on demand.

Bioengineers Mark Skylar-Scott and his group have created a method that enables them to 3D-print living heart tissue. One day, they hope to print vital components of the heart, such as valves and ventricles, that would really develop with the patient.

In the US, one in every 100 babies is born with a cardiac problem. Even though they can receive transplants, the body may reject the transplants up to 20 or 30 years after they were given. Using a patient's own cells to bio-print a new organ could lower those incidences.

"It is ambitious, but we believe that a lot of the basic building blocks to start a project like this are in place," Skylar-Scott said.

The method is an illustration of bio-printing, a technique that uses living cells to produce structures that resemble organs. Although the idea of modern bio-printing is not new, the process is laborious. Typically, one cell must be printed at a time. A single human heart would require more than a thousand years to create, even if 1,000 cells were printed per second.

By printing with organoids, collections of tens of thousands of cells, Skylar-Scott and his team have created a technique for accelerating the process. “We take millions of those and condense them into what is essentially a human stem cell mayonnaise, that we can then print through the printer,” he said.

Once the cells are printed, they take on the general shape of tissue that can then have blood vessel networks printed within them.

The group has already created a self-pumping structure that resembles a human vein and is made of tubes. Printing a larger structure, such as a useful chamber that could be grafted onto an existing heart, would be the next stage.
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Although we're probably at least two decades away from a fully printed heart, Skylar-Scott said he believes a heart valve printed using this technique could be implanted in a human patient in as little as five years.

According to a study lead by Li Qian, PhD, at the UNC School of Medicine, a protein that aids in the formation of neurons also functions to reprogram scar tissue cells into heart muscle cells, particularly when working with another protein.

Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine have made important strides in the exciting fields of cellular reprogramming and organ regeneration, and their findings could have a substantial impact on the development of future treatments for damaged hearts.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found a more streamlined and effective way to transform scar tissue cells (fibroblasts) into healthy heart muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) in a study that was published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

The fibrous, stiff tissue that causes heart failure after a heart attack or because of cardiac disease is created by fibroblasts. Researchers are looking into the possibility of treating or maybe one day curing this widespread and deadly illness by converting fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes.

Surprisingly, a gene activity-controlling protein called Ascl1, which is well recognized to be an essential protein involved in converting fibroblasts into neurons, turned out to be the key to the new cardiomyocyte-making approach. Ascl1 was once assumed to be neuron-specific by researchers.

“It’s an outside-the-box finding, and we expect it to be useful in developing future cardiac therapies and potentially other kinds of therapeutic cellular reprogramming,” said study senior author Li Qian, PhD, associate professor in the UNC Department of Pathology and Lab Medicine and associate director of the McAllister Heart Institute at the UNC School of Medicine.

In the past 15 years, researchers have created several methods to convert adult cells into stem cells and then drive those stem cells to differentiate into other types of adult cells. Recently, researchers have discovered strategies to reprogram cells directly from one mature cell type to another.

It has been hoped that once these techniques are as safe, effective, and efficient as possible, clinicians will provide a straightforward injection to patients to transform harmful cells into helpful ones.

“Reprogramming fibroblasts has long been one of the important goals in the field,” Qian said. “Fibroblast over-activity underlies many major diseases and conditions including heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, liver disease, kidney disease, and the scar-like brain damage that occurs after strokes.”

In the new study, Qian's team used three currently used approaches to reprogram mice fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes, liver cells, and neurons. This team also included co-first authors Haofei Wang, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher, and MD/PhD student Benjamin Keepers. Their goal was to document and contrast the variations in gene activity patterns and variables that control gene activity during these three separate reprogrammings.

Unexpectedly, the scientists discovered that converting fibroblasts into neurons activated a group of genes related to cardiomyocytes. They quickly discovered that Ascl1, one of the master-programmer "transcription factor" proteins that had been employed to create the neurons, was the cause of this activation.

The researchers added Ascl1 to the three-transcription factor cocktail they had been using to create cardiomyocytes to see what would happen because Ascl1 activated cardiomyocyte genes. They were shocked to see that it significantly increased reprogramming efficiency—the percentage of effectively reprogrammed cells—by over ten times. In reality, they discovered that only Ascl1 and another transcription factor known as Mef2c remained from their original cocktail of three factors.

Further research revealed that Ascl1 activates the genes for both cardiomyocytes and neurons on its own, but that it shifts away from the pro-neuron position in the presence of Mef2c. Ascl1 activates a wide range of genes related to cardiomyocytes in cooperation with Mef2c.

“Ascl1 and Mef2c work together to exert pro-cardiomyocyte effects that neither factor alone exerts, making for a potent reprogramming cocktail,” Qian said.

The findings show that the key transcription factors involved in direct cellular reprogramming are not always exclusive to the cell type being altered.
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More importantly, they represent a development toward potential cell-reprogramming treatments for serious diseases. To repair failing hearts, Qian and her team plan to create a two-in-one synthetic protein that combines the active components of Ascl1 and Mef2c.

A ground-breaking group of new vaccines for a variety of illnesses, including cancer, might save millions of lives, according to researchers. A major pharmaceutical company expressed confidence that vaccines for ailments including cancer, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, as well as others, will be available by the end of this decade.

Studies into these vaccinations are also "very promising," according to some researchers, who claim that the Covid jab's success has "unspooled" 15 years' worth of development in just 12 to 18 months.

In as little as five years, according to Dr. Paul Burton, chief medical officer of the pharmaceutical company Moderna, the company will be able to provide such medicines for "all sorts of illness areas."

Moderna, which developed a well-known coronavirus vaccine, is working on producing cancer vaccinations that specifically target certain tumor types.

Burton said: “We will have that vaccine and it will be highly effective, and it will save many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. I think we will be able to offer personalized cancer vaccines against multiple different tumor types to people around the world.”

He added that mRNA therapy might be available for uncommon diseases for which there are presently no medications, allowing vulnerable people to be protected against Covidio, the flu, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) with just one injection. mRNA-based treatments function by instructing cells to produce a protein that starts the body's immunological response to sickness.

Burton said :“I think we will have mRNA-based therapies for rare diseases that were previously undruggable, and I think that 10 years from now, we will be approaching a world where you truly can identify the genetic cause of a disease and, with relative simplicity, edit that out and repair it using mRNA-based technology.”

Scientists caution that if a high level of investment is not maintained, the fast progress, which has increased "by an order of magnitude" in the last three years, will be for naught.

Our cells can pump out the proteins we want our immune system to attack by injecting them with a synthetic form. The immune system would be made aware of an existing cancer via an mRNA-based cancer vaccine, allowing it to attack and eradicate it without harming healthy cells.

By first identifying the protein fragments on the surface of cancer cells that are absent from healthy cells and are most likely to elicit an immune response, bits of mRNA that will educate the body on how to produce those protein fragments can then be created.

To find mutations that don't exist in healthy cells, doctors first take a biopsy of a patient's tumor and submit it to a lab for genetic sequencing.

The mutation(s) fueling the cancer's growth are subsequently determined by a machine learning system. It also gains knowledge of the regions of the aberrant proteins these mutations encode that are most likely to elicit an immunological response. The most promising antigens' mRNAs are then produced and assembled into a customized vaccination.

Burton said: “I think what we have learned in recent months is that if you ever thought that mRNA was just for infectious diseases, or just for Covid, the evidence now is that that’s absolutely not the case.”
“It can apply to many disease areas; we are in cancer, infectious disease, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune diseases, rare disease. We have studies in all of those areas and they have all shown tremendous promise.”

The experimental mRNA vaccine for RSV was 83.7% efficient at preventing at least two symptoms, such as cough and fever, in adults 60 and older, according to results from a late-stage trial published in January by Moderna. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designated the vaccine as a breakthrough medicine based on this information, which expedites the regulatory review process.

Based on recent outcomes in patients with the skin cancer melanoma, the FDA gave Moderna's personalized cancer vaccine the same classification in February.

Burton said: “I think it was an order of magnitude that the pandemic sped [this technology] up by. It has also allowed us to scale up manufacturing, so we’ve gotten extremely good at making large amounts of vaccine very quickly.”

Moderna is not alone in its interest in mRNA technology. Pfizer has also begun recruitment for a late-stage clinical trial of an mRNA-based influenza vaccine, and has its sights set on other infectious diseases, including shingles, in collaboration with BioNTech. A spokesperson for Pfizer said: “The learnings from the Covid-19 vaccine development process have informed our overall approach to mRNA research and development, and how Pfizer conducts R&D (research and development) more broadly. We gained a decade’s worth of scientific knowledge in just one year.”

The major effect of the pandemic, according to Dr. Richard Hackett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovations (CEPI), has been the acceleration of the creation of many as-yet-unvalidated vaccine platforms. “It meant that events that might have unfolded over the following ten or even fifteen years were condensed into a year or a year and a half,” he said.
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There is a real need to keep the level of research and development investment high. Prof Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group and chair of the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) said: “If you take a step back to think about what we are prepared to invest in during peacetime, like having a substantial military for most countries. Pandemics are as much a threat, if not more, than a military threat, because we know they are going to happen as a certainty from where we are today. But we’re not investing even the amount that it would cost to build one nuclear submarine.”

One of the proven methods of fighting cancer tumors is by injecting the tumor with a stimulant that will recruit immune cells to destroy tumor cells. Usually, this is done by injecting directly into the tumor, but it can be challenging when the tumor is in a hard-to-reach location.

Stanford’s new research has developed a new synthetic molecule that combines a tumor-targeting agent with another molecule that triggers the immune system to attack the tumor. The immunotherapy can be administered intravenously and can target either a specific location or multiple tumors.

The research team has just completed testing on laboratory animals and they were able to induce complete tumor regression in half the test population infected with aggressive triple negative breast cancers with just one injection. They had similar results from a group of mice infected with pancreatic cancer.

“We essentially cured some animals with just a few injections,” said Jennifer Cochran, PhD, the Shriram Chair of the Department of Bioengineering. “It was pretty astonishing. When we looked within the tumors, we saw they went from a highly immunosuppressive microenvironment to one full of activated B and T cells — similar to what happens when the immune-stimulating molecule is injected directly into the tumor. So, we’re achieving intra-tumoral injection results but with an IV delivery.”

Building on Earlier Research. The work in this study builds on that done in 2018 by Ronald Levy, MD and Edit Saga-Barfi, PhD, both of Stanford School of Medicine. That study used the same immune-activating agent and a different one injected directly into the tumor site. The results of that trial were complete tumor eradication, elimination of distant metastases and also blocked recurrence in mammary tumors. The research group then launched a clinical trial in people with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“The surprising result of the new research was that the sculpting of the tumor microenvironment by this intravenously administered molecule was identical to that achieved by injecting immune stimulating agents directly into the tumor,” Levy said. “This is a big advantage because it’s no longer necessary to have an easily or safely injectable tumor site.”

Next Steps. Before any human testing can occur, much more research needs to be done. The level of optimism is high in the research team because the tumor-targeting portion of the PIP-CpG molecule (PIP) appears to recognize proteins called interns. Because these are found at high levels on the surface of many cancer types, there is a possibility for an off-the-shelf treatment for patients with a variety of cancer types.
Cochran and her team have coupled the PIP-CpG molecule with probes that can be visualized with near-infrared imaging or positron emission tomography. This gives them the tool to track the location of hard-to-see cancers.
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“These integrin-targeting molecules act like guided missiles,” Cochran said. “They can deliver toxic drugs or imaging agents. Now we’re using them to deliver a signal that riles up the immune cells to fight the tumor.” That signal, CpG, mimics a pattern of DNA common in bacteria and viruses but rarely found in vertebrates.
“After more than 10 years of work on PIP, it is rewarding to experience this convergence of expertise from laboratories around Stanford, which allowed us to develop a highly promising new cancer treatment strategy,” Cochran said.

The single most important factor in surviving a battlefield injury is the combat medic. The medic is first on the scene and can administer help within the Golden Hour or even Golden Ten Minutes. Quick, effective medical procedures can be the difference between life and death.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected Raytheon BBN to lead a team to develop an augmented reality device that will provide the combat medic with a virtual assistant. The system will use a set of AR goggles, which will provide visual information on 50 different medical procedures.

Medics are highly trained in the most common battlefield injuries, but they aren’t doctors or surgeons and often have no experience in little-used procedures which may be needed at a moment’s notice. This is why DARPA is working on its Medical Assistance, Guidance, Instruction and Correction (MAGIC) system. 

MAGIC uses a pair of augmented reality goggles equipped with audio and video sensors and special artificial intelligence software that can act as an assistant to monitor the situation and advise the medic on how to proceed.

Raytheon will use machine learning technology to ‘teach’ the system both medical skills and situation assessment skills. The initial prototype will study 2,500 stereo videos and almost 50 million images. The machine learning process will review the historical data and synthesize useful concepts and solutions from that data.

When the AI software is ready, MAGIC should be able to provide spoken suggestions to medics or project visual overlays on the scene to guide their hands through needed medical procedures. The system will also provide events timing from engagement to final hand-off to field hospital personnel. MAGIC will also provide dosage guidance for in-field medications.

A first prototype is expected in about 18 months.
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"The combat medical environment is challenging and chaotic," said Raytheon BBN scientist Brian VanVoorst. "Our goal for the Raytheon BBN MAGIC AI tool is to help support personnel to provide guidance as needed without disrupting their concentration."

Nobody enjoys getting the jab. Whether it's a standard shot, an epidural or dental injection, or a daily shot for needed medicine, the experience has created a class of phobias, with one Harvard study estimating that fear of needles affects up to 25% of adults. 

Despite so much innovation in other areas of medicine, the experience of getting a shot or injection hasn't really changed all that much in the last century. But thankfully new technologies are finally catching on and changing how people think about needles, and the technology is being embraced readily by providers.

"Our injection technologies serving the dental and epidural community have been growing," says Arjan Haverhals, CEO of Milestone Scientific, which has pioneered a computer-controlled injection technology that guides the injection below the patient's pain threshold, making injections precise, efficient, and virtually painless. "We have a growing number of hospitals embracing our technology. We’ve also entered the private pain clinic market to treat chronic back pain. Our dental delivery system, which is available nationwide and in Canada, has seen growing interest from all dental professionals worldwide."

A handful of technology innovators like Milestone Scientific are bent on improving the jab through wearables, computer guidance, and needle-free injection technologies. 

Portal Instruments, an MIT spinoff, is another player in the space. The company is bringing a needle-free injection device to market that delivers a rapid, high-pressure stream of medicine, as thin as a strand of hair, through the skin in adjustable dosages, causing little to no pain. A connected app tracks each dose and the medicine's effects and uploads that information to the cloud, for patients and doctors. The device would be sold as a drug-device combination product to medical professionals and provided to patients with a prescription.

Enable Injection designs, manufactures, and sells wearable delivery devices for injectable drugs. Patients attach the device onto the skin by themselves, and trigger needle insertion and retraction by pressing a button on the device. Through a partnership with Flex, Enable also offers a version of the drug delivery platform that may connect to smartphones via Bluetooth. According to the company's website, the Enable Smart enFuse product could be "pre-integrated" into the digital health platform or strategy of an organization for improved patient data collection. 

It's little surprise there's so much activity around increasing outcomes and lowering pain associated with injections. Growth of the global injectable drug delivery devices market is expected to increase from $16 billion in 2019 to $21.3 billion in 2023, partly due to increased demand for injection devices that can be used and monitored in the home environment. Milestone, for one, has seen significant interest in the U.S, where epidural-specific systems are in place and trials underway in Florida, Michigan, Texas, South Carolina, Illinois, and Massachusetts, to name a few. The Dental delivery system is used widely throughout the country with growing interest from specialty practices including periodontic, cosmetic, and pediatric. 

"For medical, this means healthcare outcome for patients at lower costs. For dental, it means pain-free injections, more comfort, and less fear for patients," says Haverhals, "plus the ability for additional business for dentists. In fact, many of our dentists have noted word-of-mouth as a marketing tool for growing their business just by adopting our injection technology."

Engineers from Yale University have developed a wearable device that can help individuals assess whether they have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The cheap device can clip onto a person’s clothes and capture aerosolized viral particles in the surrounding environment.

From rapid tests to vaccines, many extraordinary innovations have helped us navigate this global pandemic. While we have several ways to determine whether a person has been infected with SARS-CoV-2, we still can only guess when and how someone has been exposed to the virus.

This innovation from a team of Yale University researchers is hoping to fill that surveillance gap. Called the Fresh Air Clip, the device is cheap, designed to attach to a person’s collar and capture aerosolized viral particles around a person’s mouth and nose.

The clip captures viral particles on a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) surface. At the end of a day, or several days, a wearer removes the clip and sends it to a lab, which uses polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis to determine the presence of SARS-CoV-2.

A new study is reporting on several tests of the Fresh Air Clip establishing it can effectively capture airborne viral particles. One experiment involved supplying the clips to several volunteers who wore the monitors for up to five days. Of the 62 monitors deployed, five returned positive results, showing exposure to SARS-CoV-2.

“Of the positive Fresh Air Clips, four were worn by restaurant servers and one was worn by a homeless shelter staff person,” the study shows. “Notably, two positive samples collected in restaurants with indoor dining were found to have high viral load when compared to the other samples (>100 copies per clip), suggestive of close contact with one or more infected individuals.”

As well as establishing the wearable monitor as being able to capture detectable levels of viral particles, the researchers note the device is sensitive enough to catch exposure events at sub infectious doses. This suggests the volume of viral particles picked up by the monitor allows for the quantification of environmental exposure to the virus. This is important, as it means the device does not simply offer an indication of viral exposure but a measure of the level of exposure.

Krystal Pollitt, a researcher working on the device, says one interesting potential use for the device could be to test the effectiveness of ventilation settings in COVID positive patient hospital rooms. Speaking to Yale News recently, Pollitt said her team found airborne traces of SARS-CoV-2 in hospital rooms that were thought to be well ventilated.

“We found this to be really interesting because we know that one of the infection control measures that is being highly recommended is enhanced ventilation,” said Pollitt. “Within the hospital network we had very high air change rates. Despite having those high air change rates, we could still detect airborne levels across the room.”

In its current form, the Fresh Air Clip can screen indoor environments and establish whether they are high-risk areas for exposure. Pollitt also said the wearable can also be used to identify indoor exposure events days before positive cases appear.

“The Fresh Air Clip can be useful for early identification of exposure events and allow for rapid action to be taken,” Pollitt said. “Exposed individuals can get tested or quarantine to prevent potential community transmission.”

The next big step for the device will be to develop ways for the monitor to offer real-time notification of viral exposure, in much the same way a radiation strip can immediately notify a wearer they are exposed to gamma or x-rays. Pollitt says she is interested in further developing the device with real-time exposure notifications.
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“It’s key to report back results quick,” Pollitt says. “We are keen to incorporate techniques for real-time SARS-CoV-2 detection.”
The new study was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters.