Tuberculosis Detection

Medical diagnostics are often expensive, time consuming and require complex laboratory equipment. Olfactory sensors that "smell" diseases have generated much interest as they promise cheap, quick, non-invasive and reliable diagnosis of a variety of conditions. This is especially important to developing countries, which often have little money and few resources to combat disease in their populations.

Inscentinel, in a study conducted with London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, has shown that bees have the potential to be used as effective diagnostics of disease. Honeybees were trained to recognise volatile compounds from Mycobacterium bovis BCG, a micobacteria very close to TB but safer to handle. The conditioned bees where found to differentiate vapours from M. bovis BCG from those of the saprophytic environmental mycobacteria M. smegmatis and M. aurum. Inscentinel is seeking funding to carry on this research. Sniffer rats are able to identify sputum of patients infected with TB which shows that chemicals key markers of TB are released and can be detected.

Honeybees are found all over the world, and the equipment required is relatively simple and inexpensive. Inscentinel's technology could be deployed for medical diagnostics both in the laboratory and in the field, ultimately protecting people and saving lives.