In Vitro Discrimination of Tumor Cell Lines with an Electronic Nose

Abstract

The electronic nose can distinguish between tumor cell lines in vitro and has the potential to be a useful screening test for cancer.

Increased number of volatile organic compounds over malignant glottic lesions

“…Under this hypothesis, sampling for VOCs directly over the site of the lesion may provide for earlier detection. Consistent with this notion, VOCs are altered above upper aerodigestive tract tumor cells in vitro, including adenocarcinoma, SCC, and mesothelioma . Our results are consistent with this notion as well.…”

“…VOCs are readily detected by the mammalian olfactory system, and are typically detectable by electronic noses, devices aimed at mimicking olfactory function. Recent studies imply that VOC detection by electronic noses may provide noninvasive diagnosis and screening of a wide range of diseases, including renal failure, gastroesophageal reflux, pulmonary diseases, infections, schizophrenia, and malignancy . These studies typically used profiling of the VOCs in exhaled breath collected from patients.…”

“…Notably, this question does not take away from the potential diagnostic value of these methods, but it remains an important question for better understanding of the underlying mechanisms. With this in mind, a recent study used an electronic nose to sample VOCs directly over malignant cell lines in vitro, and was able to distinguish between different types of upper aerodigestive tract tumor cells . Here we set out to test the hypothesis that such VOC testing directly above the lesion can also be informative in vivo.…”

Electronic nose for tracking different types of leukaemia: future prospects in diagnosis

“…The e-nose has successfully classified and identified blood samples for patients with confirmed ALL, AML, CLL and CML from those for HC with no false-positive or false-negative results to a very high degree of precision, as evidenced by PCA and CDA results. This technique has been used earlier for the identification of brain and lung cancers and for the in vitro discrimination of tumour cell lines [7][8][9][10]. Thus, we believe the e-nose can assist the clinician in diagnostic decisions and may bear potential as a standard process for the low-cost mass screening and early detection of leukaemia, especially in underresourced laboratories in developing countries.…”

Use of volatile fingerprints for rapid screening of antifungal agents for efficacy against dermatophyte Trichophyton species

“…Quantitative analysis of VOCs has almost exclusively been based on gas chromatography-mass spectrometry which is time-consuming, relatively expensive, and required skilled operators [17,19]. However, rapid qualitative analysis of volatile production patterns by means of electronic nose (E-nose) devices for early detection and discrimination of infections [3,4,7,10,11,12,18,15,16] or non-infectious diseases such as lung cancer and diabetes mellitus [4,13,19] has yielded promising results.…”