New Device Can Detect Peanut Allergens on a Plate in 30 Seconds

New Device Can Detect Peanut Allergens on a Plate in 30 Seconds

Peanuts on a plate can be deadly for those with severe allergies, but an Israeli startup company wants to alleviate that fear.

(Photo credit: @corleto/Unsplash)



People with life-threatening allergies live in constant fear of coming into contact with deadly allergens. Researchers estimate that about 32 million Americans have food allergies, with the most severe being milk, egg, peanut, tree nuts, wheat, soy, fish, and shellfish.

"It is important to understand that just several years ago, this would not have been possible."

Every three minutes, a food allergy reaction sends someone to the emergency room, and 200,000 people in the U.S. require emergency medical care each year for allergic reactions, according to Food Allergy Research and Education.

But what if there was a way you could easily detect if something you were about to eat contains any harmful allergens? Thanks to Israeli scientists, this will soon be the case — at least for peanuts. The team has been working to develop a handheld device called Allerguard, which analyzes the vapors in your meal and can detect allergens in 30 seconds.

Leapsmag spoke with the founder and CTO of Allerguard, Guy Ayal, about the groundbreaking technology, how it works, and when it will be available to purchase.

What prompted you to create this device? Do you have a personal connection with severe food allergies?

Guy Ayal: My eldest daughter's best friend suffers from a severe food allergy, and I experienced first-hand the effect it has on the person and their immediate surroundings. Most notable for me was the effect on the quality of life – the experience of living in constant fear. Everything we do at Allerguard is basically to alleviate some of that fear.

How exactly does the device work?

The device is built on two main pillars. The first is the nano-chemical stage, in which we developed specially attuned nanoparticles that selectively adhere only to the specific molecules that we are looking for. Those molecules, once bound to the nanoparticles, induce a change in their electrical behavior, which is measured and analyzed by the second main pillar -- highly advanced machine learning algorithms, which can surmise which molecules were collected, and thus whether or not peanuts (or in the future, other allergens) were detected.

It is important to understand that just several years ago, this would not have been possible, because both the nano-chemistry, and especially the entire world of machine learning, big data, and what is commonly known as AI only started to exist in the '90s, and reached applicability for handheld devices only in the past few years.

Where are you at in the development process and when will the device be available to consumers?

We have concluded the proof of concept and proof of capability phase, when we demonstrated successful detection of the minimal known clinical amount that may cause the slightest effect in the most severely allergic person – less than 1 mg of peanut (actually it is 0.7 mg). Over the next 18 months will be productization, qualification, and validation of our device, which should be ready to market in the latter half of 2021. The sensor will be available in the U.S., and after a year in Europe and Canada.

The Allerguard was made possible through recent advances in machine learning, big data, and AI.

(Courtesy)

How much will it cost?

Our target price is about $200 for the device, with a disposable SenseCard that will run for at least a full day and cost about $1. That card is for a specific allergen and will work for multiple scans in a day, not just one time.

[At a later stage, the company will have sensors for other allergens like tree nuts, eggs, and milk, and they'll develop a multi-SenseCard that works for a few allergens at once.]

Are there any other devices on the market that do something similar to Allerguard?

No other devices are even close to supplying the level of service that we promise. All known methods for allergen detection rely on sampling of the food, which is a viable solution for homogenous foodstuffs, such as a factory testing their raw ingredients, but not for something as heterogenous as an actual dish – especially not for solid allergens such as peanuts, treenuts, or sesame.

If there is a single peanut in your plate, and you sample from anywhere on that plate which is not where that peanut is located, you will find that your sample is perfectly clean – because it is. But the dish is not. That dish is a death trap for an allergic person. Allerguard is the only suggested solution that could indeed detect that peanut, no matter where in that plate it is hiding.

Anything else readers should know?
Our first-generation product will be for peanuts only. You have to understand, we are still a start-up company, and if we don't concentrate our limited resources to one specific goal, we will not be able to achieve anything at all. Once we are ready to market our first device, the peanut detector, we will be able to start the R&D for the 2nd product, which will be for another allergen – most likely tree nuts and/or sesame, but that will probably be in debate until we actually start it.

Michelle Gant
Michelle Gant is an editor at GOOD Worldwide. She was previously at Fox, StyleCaster, Domino, SELF, and CBS.
The World’s First Longevity Charter City: An interview with Niklas Anzinger.

Niklas Anzinger is the founder of Infinita VC based in the charter city of Prospera in Honduras. Infinita focuses on a new trend of charter cities and other forms of alternative jurisdictions. Healso hosts a podcast about how to accelerate the future by unblocking “stranded technologies”.This spring he was a part of the network city experiment Zuzalu spearheaded by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin where a few hundred invited guests from the spheres of longevity, biotechnology, crypto, artificial intelligence and investment came together to form a two-monthlong community. It has been described as the world’s first pop-up city. Every morning Vitalians would descend on a long breakfast—the menu had been carefully designed by famed radical longevity self-experimenter Bryan Johnson—and there is where I first met Anzinger who told me about Prospera. Intrigued to say the least, I caught up with him later the same week and the following is a record of our conversation.

Keep Reading Keep Reading
Ingemar Patrick Linden
Driven by a passion to probe the fundamental questions we are confronted with, Dr. INGEMAR PATRICK LINDEN has been on a journey of discovery taking him from Lund University in Sweden, to UCL in London, to University of California, to New York, where he has taught philosophy for almost a decade. Death. It does not get more fundamental than that. One of the ideas that has remained a firm conviction of the author’s since childhood is that we do not have enough time. We are but the beginnings of complete humans, fragments of what we could be. It was the realization that not all share this view, in fact, surveys show that most do not, that inspired, and necessitated, the writing of THE CASE AGAINST DEATH.
person using an apple watch
Luke Chesser - Unsplash

Today’s podcast guest is Rosalind Picard, a researcher, inventor named on over 100 patents, entrepreneur, author, professor and engineer. When it comes to the science related to endowing computer software with emotional intelligence, she wrote the book. It’s published by MIT Press and called Affective Computing.

Dr. Picard is founder and director of the MIT Media Lab’s Affective Computing Research Group. Her research and engineering contributions have been recognized internationally. For example, she received the 2022 International Lombardy Prize for Computer Science Research, considered by many to be the Nobel prize in computer science.

Keep Reading Keep Reading
Matt Fuchs
Matt Fuchs is the host of the Making Sense of Science podcast and served previously as the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org. He writes as a contributor to the Washington Post, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, WIRED, Nautilus Magazine, Fortune Magazine and TIME Magazine. Follow him @fuchswriter.