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                            Funding & Awards
 Chemical Foundations of a Cannabis Breathalyzer
Award Information
Awardee
              National Institute of Standards and Technology
Award #
              DJO-NIJ-19-RO-0008
Funding Category
              Competitive

Status
              Open
Funding First Awarded
              2019
Total funding (to date)
              $481,103
Original Solicitation
              Research and Development in Forensic Science for Criminal Justice Purposes, FY 2019
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2019, $481,103)
Cannabis decriminalization for medicinal and adult recreational uses by state ballot initiatives has created an urgent need for roadside detection of cannabis impairment. The proposed work, in three phases, lays the chemical foundation for industry to develop a cannabis breathalyzer that identifies impaired drivers, improving public safety and supporting the criminal justice system. Current breathalyzer technology has been limited to the detection of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) potentially linked to recent smoking or vaping, ignoring the presence of a complex mixture of biomarkers and other chemicals in breath. Furthermore, there has been no published study identifying the chemical signature or biomarkers of intoxication in exhaled breath of cannabis users. Phase I of our work will fill this knowledge gap while evaluating two existing devices for breath collection. Collaborators at the University of Colorado will provide exhaled breath samples from human subjects. We will conduct quantitative analysis of samples for targeted cannabinoids, terpenoids, and metabolites, as well as an untargeted, chemometric analysis. Blood composition and impairment will be measured alongside breath. THC and other cannabinoids are non-volatile and chemically unstable, creating an as-yet unsolved measurement challenge that did not exist for the alcohol breathalyzer. In Phase II, we will use our unique expertise in developing new methods· for property measurements of large and unstable compounds to measure vapor pressures and blood-air partition coefficients of the compounds we identify in Phase I. These data may inform correlations between breath and blood composition that we observe in the collaborative clinical studies, which also include important person-to-person variation. Phase Ill involves rigorous characterization of current and potential device materials. We will innovate powerful nuclear magnetic resonance techniques to measure competitive adsorption and desorption properties for cannabis compounds and breathalyzer materials. We will also use our knowledge of vapor pressures to deliver a simulated breath with known composition to the devices tested in Phase I in order to assess their overall recovery. Although the clinical, pharmacokinetic, thermophysical, and materials knowledge we generate will be powerful, and both methods and data will be made available to the scientific community, the ultimate positive impact on criminal justice system will be a breathalyzer device that leverages the optimal materials and collects the right target compounds to detect intoxication. We envision a multisector collaboration with the breathalyzer device industry and our university colleagues as a path forward from this proposal.



  
Grant-Funded Publications
        
                      THC in breath aerosols collected with an impaction filter device before and after legal-market product inhalation—a pilot study
                  3D computational fluid and particle dynamics simulations: metrics of aerosol capture by impaction filters
                  Vapor Pressure Measurements on Linalool Using a Rapid and Inexpensive Method Suitable for Cannabis-Associated Terpenes
                  Rapid Vapor-Collection Method for Vapor Pressure Measurements of Low-Volatility Compounds

  
Date Created: December 11, 2020
    
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