PSU Magazine Fall 2003

henever you exhale, you tell a story. lt may be that you had a Caesar salad for lunch, or that you popped a breath mint in anticipation of meeting someone. But it could also be that you have diabetes or a number of other medical conditions. PSU chemistry professor Bob O'Brien is an expert in testing the hundreds of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that exist in any sampling of air, whether human breath or the urban atmosphere, and has formed a private company, VOC Technologies, to develop and market the kinds of equip– ment required for such precise work. O'Brien received an $850,000 grant this year from the National Institutes of Health Lo develop instruments that use human breath in diagnoses that previ– ously could only be performed through blood sampling, CT scans, or exhaus– tive tests. He has a two-year goal to make this diagnostic tool commerciall y 10 PSU MAGAZINE FALL 2002 available. Toward that end, he is work– ing with doctors at Oregon Health & Science University (O}'ISU) and is sam– pling the breath of about 300 Portland State students in order to establish a baseline of what may be considered "normal. " He already knows what's not nor– mal-aberrations that can indicate the presence of disease. For example, peo– ple with diabetes show elevated levels of acetone in their breath because they are metabolizing fats instead of sugars. Breath indicators even exist for schizo– phrenia, he says. O'Brien is working most closely with OHSU specialists in chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, or COPD. Like emphysema, much of COPD is brought on by smoking, but O'Brien says there is also a genetic com– ponent to the disease--one that may be detected through breath analysis. lf so, doctors will be able to use his device to diagnose the disease early and give incentive to patients to quit smoking. These are only some of the many possible applications of the work generated by O'Brien and his partner, Lucas Klesch, at VOC Technologies. lesch, 26, studied under O'Brien as an undergrad, then returned LO Portland to help start the company after attending graduate school at the University of California at Riverside. Seeing the pos– sibilities of what was to come, he worked a year without pay as VOC Technolo– gies was getting off the ground. He got by on leftover graduate school money, as well as help from friends and family. He stuck with it, he says,