News Room

Test sense of smell to sniff out illnesses
Local firm's ClinicNose may detect certain diseases early by checking for deterioration of sense of smell

By Chang Ai-Lien

A SINGAPORE company has come up with a machine that can determine whether a person has the nose of a bloodhound, or one that cannot tell eau de cologne from eau de skunk.

The $60,000 device, named the ClinicNose, could one day be used to detect certain diseases in their early stages.

Checking our the machine is Aromatrix engineer Jane Tan.The $60,000 ClinicNose could one day be used for early detection of ailments like Alzheimer's which affect the sense of smell.-- MALCOLM MCLEOD

These ailments, which include Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, affect a sufferer's sense of smell.

The device is being tried out at the Singapore General Hospital. So far, it has been used to test about 750 people, including 250 likely to have an impaired sense of smell because of nasal allergies, polyps, nose infections, or other causes.

The results are still being collated, but Associate Professor Low Wong Kein, head of the hospital's ear, nose and throat department, said the findings so far indicate that the ClinicNose is superior to conventional methods of determining these illnesses.

'It appears to be superior not only in quality, but also because it can distinguish different levels of sensitivity,' he explained.

Common methods used to test the sense of smell tend to be subjective, as they look at a patient's ability to recognise smells, rather than measuring his sensitivity to them.

Prof Low has not heard of any commercial systems that are able to do this.

'There's certainly potential for further experiments in a wide scope of areas,' he added.

These could include testing how various treatments for people with an impaired sense of smell work, and using the Nose to identify people who may develop diseases that cause a reduced sense of smell.

Dr Lawrence Koe, chairman of home-grown company Aromatrix which came up with the device, said: 'Of our five senses, smell is the most neglected and least studied.'

He hopes that the machine, which is the size of a small television sitting on a desk-height trolley, can one day be used as a standard procedure to assess the overall health of everyone, from schoolchildren to the aged.

'Hopefully it will become as common as eye and ear tests are today,' he said.

Aromatrix developed ClinicNose with money from The Enterprise Challenge, a government fund aimed at taking gambles on unusual and even apparently whacky ideas.

So far, about $16 million has been disbursed for work on 48 innovations.

Aromatrix made the headlines three years ago for its Bioscrubber - cultured bacteria so hungry for smelly gases that they literally gobble the smells up, resulting in clean, fresh air.

Dr Koe, who is also Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University's school of civil and environmental engineering, said that he came up with the idea of the Nose because machines are often used to test the strength of certain smells in his line of work.

'I thought, why not use reverse engineering and assess the strength of the nose instead,' he said.

His company is one of several promising local start-ups that will take part in an international networking event, Global Entrepolis @ Singapore, later this month.

About 10,000 participants are expected to attend the six-day affair, which starts on Oct 27. They include entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and chief executives from all over the world.

(Straits Times, 7th October 2003, PDF Version)