May 17, 2021   SOURCE: BusinessWire

Cardea Bio Partners with Scentian Bio to Power Insect Odorant Receptor-Enabled Flavor Profiling Product

Cardea Bio, a Tech+Bio company integrating molecular biology with semiconductor electronics, has signed a commercial partnership with Scentian Bio. Scentian is an expert in synthetic insect odorant receptors (iORs), one of nature’s most powerful ways of detecting and interpreting smells.

The “Powered by Cardea” partnership empowers Scentian with a customized Cardean chipset, built with graphene-based biology-gated transistors, which allows Scentian to manufacture a bio-electronic tongue/nose tech platform. This platform is instantly making Scentian a world leader in the electronic detection of liquid and air-borne chemical biomarkers.

Across the food supply chain, flavor and fragrance quality control currently relies on legacy methods, including so-called “taste testers” or slow, bulky, expensive lab instruments. Cardea and Scentian’s partnership will produce a “bio-electronic tongue/nose” that speeds up testing, that is small enough to fit in a handheld device, and that is simple enough to use anywhere by anyone.

“More than 30 years of combined scientific diligence are going into what we are building with Cardea,” said Dr. Andrew Králíček, Chief Technology Officer at Scentian Bio. “The combination of Cardea’s technology with our insect odorant receptors enables us to translate the language of chemical compounds into digital signals to analyze food components, detect airborne and liquid-based toxins, and diagnose disease in almost real-time on a massive scale.”

Every flavor and fragrance has a unique combination of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can be read by the system. Scentian’s platform will house 40-50 receptors and will be able to detect thousands of chemical signals at the push of a button.

With the support of Cardea, Scentian plans to expand its offerings to broader food quality testing, as well as animal and human disease diagnostics. This collaboration aims to resolve the challenges associated with standard detection methods, which are typically slow and expensive, as they can only be run with the help of complex scientific personnel, laboratories, and techniques. Further product generations will include developing next-generation diagnostic tools that could bypass complex chemical assays and detect the presence of diseases based on their distinctive VOC profiles from, for example, a patient’s breath.

“Our Cardean chipsets enable Scentian to mass-produce a new generation of products that can livestream liquid and airborne biological signals,” said Michael Heltzen, Chief Executive Officer at Cardea. “It is fascinating to see the world class team at Scentian make synthetic insect odor receptors and integrate them with our technology, so that together, we can link smells and tastes up to the digital world. The idea of electronic noses that are based on biological receptors has been dreamed and theorized for generations, but now we have them running in our labs thanks to this innovation partnership, which we are truly thankful and happy about.”

Cardea is continuing to explore and develop applications for its Cardean Transistors in industries ranging from human health to agriculture to national defense.

The company is open to new partnerships via its “Powered by Cardea” Innovation Partnership Program. Learn how the Cardea Innovation Partnership Program works here: https://cardeabio.com/partnership-program/

About Cardea Bio

Cardea is linking computers to the LIVE molecular signals running biology. Its multi-omics technology consists of a Tech+Bio Infrastructure (hardware, software and wetware) and Chipsets manufactured with proprietary Graphene-based Biology-gated Transistors, or Cardean Transistors™ for short.

Cardean Transistors™ leverage graphene, a nanomaterial that is biocompatible and a near perfect conductor due to only being one atom thick, in contrast to the common semiconductor material silicon. Cardea thereby gains a signal resolution high enough to listen into the live molecular signals and that way replaces optical and static measurements with interactive live-streams of multi-omics signal analysis.

Cardea is on a long-term mission they call “Linking up to Life” to empower its “Powered by Cardea” partners with Tech+Bio solutions that will enable them to make significant positive impacts on the world via innovative applications, that are Linking up to Life. For more information about Cardea Bio Inc. visit www.cardeabio.com

About Scentian Bio

Scentian Bio is the first company in the world to combine insect olfactory receptors with nanotechnology to taste and smell chemical compounds ultrasensitively. Scentian Bio is developing portable biosensor devices for the real-time interpretation of complex chemical signatures. This biosensor platform is exclusively licensed from Plant & Food Research based in New Zealand and is backed by almost 20 years of fundamental research. This disruptive technology will improve the precision and speed of QC and new product development for the flavour & fragrance, and food & beverage industries. It also has the potential to impact human & animal health diagnostics, food safety monitoring, and water & air quality analysis. For more information visit www.scentianbio.com