New Breathanalyzer can Detect Deadly Lung Cancer

Researchers have created a breathanalyzer that detects deadly lung cancer. The device could save thousands of lives each year by diagnosing cancer faster and making the diagnosis process more efficient.

Lung cancer is a silent killer. It spreads without being detected. Now - Israeli, American, and British cancer researchers have found a way to "sniff out" the cancer.

The device has a "NaNose" nanotech chip, which was developed by Prof. Nir Peled of the Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Prof. Hossam Haick (inventor) of the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and Prof. Fred Hirsch of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver, according to a news release.

The device was tested on 358 patients who were either diagnosed with lung cancer or were at a high-risk of developing it.

"Our NaNose was able to detect lung cancer with 90 percent accuracy even when the lung nodule was tiny and hard to sample. It was even able to discriminate between subtypes of cancer, which was unexpected," said Dr. Peled.

The device works by detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are compounds that evaporate into the air and produce a distinct "scent". The NaNose chip looks for signature patterns of the cancer in the exhaled breath of the patients. According to researchers, in four out of five participants, the device could differentiate between benign and malignant (deadly) lung cancer and even detected the sub-types.

"Cancer cells not only have a different and unique smell or signature, you can even discriminate between subtypes and advancement of the disease," said Dr. Peled. "The bigger the tumor, the more robust is the signature."

In another experiment, the device was able to find healthy people in a group of participants that had both healthy and cancer patients. The breathanalyzer could sort healthy people from early-stage lung cancer patients around 85 percent of the time.

The study was presented at a recent American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago. The research was supported by the European Union LCAOS grant and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC).

Looking for VOCs to detect cancers isn't a new idea. A related test was recently developed by Cleveland Clinic researchers and colleagues. This device also checked for volatile organic compounds to detect lung cancer and sort the tumor by its subtypes. Researchers from Israel had earlier reported developing a breathanalyzer that could help diagnose stomach cancer.