'Electronic nose' sniffs out cancer in blood samples - Futurity

You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. An odor-based test that sniffs out vapors emanating from blood samples was able to distinguish between benign and pancreatic and ovarian cancer cells with up to 95% accuracy, according to a new study. The findings suggest that the tool--which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to decipher the mixture of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitting off cells in blood plasma samples--could serve as a noninvasive approach to screen for harder-to-detect cancers, such as pancreatic and ovarian. "It's an early study but the results are very promising," says A.T. Charlie Johnson, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. "The data shows we can identify these tumors 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."