The early detection of cancer has gained a justifiable great interest. The use of genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics for this purpose has been the focus of a lot of research. The introduction of liquid biopsy made cancer diagnosis by just blood sampling a dream coming true. The analysis of breath would certainly be much easier, at least for the patients. A recently published study showed that lung cancer can be detected by analyzing the breath for cancer metabolites, lung cancer breathomics.
Cancer Blood Tests Revolutionize Oncology
Researchers at Peking University People’s Hospital in China conducted breathomics testing by mass spectrometry before surgery and 4 weeks after surgery. They selected 28 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as candidates based on a literature review. VOCs that changed significantly postoperatively in patients with lung cancer were selected as potential breath biomarkers.
In the discovery study of 84 patients with lung cancer, perioperative breathomics demonstrated 16 VOCs as lung cancer breath biomarkers. They were classified as aldehydes, hydrocarbons, ketones, carboxylic acids, and furan.
In the external validation study including 157 patients with lung cancer and 368 healthy individuals, patients with lung cancer showed elevated spectrum peak intensity of the 16 VOCs after adjusting for age, sex, smoking, and comorbidities. The diagnostic model including 16 VOCs achieved an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.952, sensitivity of 89.2%, specificity of 89.1%, and accuracy of 89.1% in lung cancer diagnosis.
This indicates that lung cancer breathomics is an effective approach for lung cancer detection. This approach involves the cancer metabolome in the diagnosis of cancer, which may be considered less complicated than using the genome or transcriptome. It is a non-invasive approach and is more acceptable by the patients even than blood testing.
These results encourage the use of this new method for screening of high-risk populations. The biomedical community is waiting for more about this new approach.
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