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The odour-based test, which sniffs out vapours coming from blood samples, was developed at the University of Pennsylvania.
Researchers at the university said the tool, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to decipher the mixture of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitting from cells in blood plasma, could serve as a non-invasive approach to screen for difficult-to-detect cancers such as pancreatic and ovarian.
“It's an early study but the results are very promising,” said nanoscale physicist Professor A T Charlie Johnson. “The data shows we can identify these tumours at both advanced and the earliest stages, which is exciting. If developed appropriately for the clinical setting, this could potentially be a test that's done on a standard blood draw that may be part of your annual physical.”
The ‘electronic olfaction’ system is equipped with nanosensors calibrated to detect the composition of VOCs, which all cells emanate. Previous studies from the researchers demonstrated that VOCs released from tissue and plasma from ovarian cancer patients are distinct from those released by patients with benign tumours.
The researchers carried out a study with 93 patients – 20 with ovarian cancer, 20 with benign ovarian tumours, 20 age-matched controls with no cancer, 13 with pancreatic cancer, 10 patients with benign pancreatic disease and 10 more controls. The vapour sensors discriminated the VOCs from ovarian cancer with 95% accuracy and pancreatic cancer with 90% accuracy. The tool also correctly identified all patients, a total of eight, with early-stage cancers.
The technology's pattern recognition approach is similar to the way humans’ sense of smell works, where a distinct mixture of compounds tells the brain what it is smelling. The tool was trained to identify the VOC patterns more associated with cancer cells and those associated with cells from healthy blood samples in 20 minutes or less.
The research team is working with VOC Health to commercialise the device for research and clinical applications. The researchers said collaboration with CEO Richard Postrel has already led to a 20-fold improvement in detection speed.
“Initial prototypes of commercial devices able to detect cancer from liquids and vapours will be ready soon and be provided to these Penn researchers to further their work,” said Postrel.
Similar technology based on the cancer-detection research could detect the odour of people with Covid-19. In a related effort with VOC Health, Johnson and co-investigator Professor Benjamin Abella MD were awarded a two-year, $2m grant from the National Institutes of Health and National Centre for Advancing Translational Sciences for the development of a handheld device for the task.
Co-authors of the cancer detection study included Erica L Carpenter, director of the Circulating Tumour Material Laboratory, Janos Tanyi MD, assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Cynthia Otto, professor at Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine, and the late George Preti of the Monell Chemical Senses Centre.
The results will be presented at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting on Friday (4 June).
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