Cancer Researchers Announce a New Test Which May Identify Early Stage Lung Cancer

U.S. cancer researchers, in a press release Sunday, revealed the development of a test that can identify a patient suffering from lung cancer with "moderate accuracy," even when the disease is in its early stages.

The researchers' press release, issued by Eurakalert for a report to be published in Thorax - an international journal of respiratory medicine - says the test - a chemical color sensor roughly the size of a coin - detects minute changes in the chemical signature of a person with lung cancer. The test is not expensive.

The color sensor was used to test the breath of 122 people with different types of respiratory diseases, along with 21 healthy people. Of the 143 people in the test group, 49 had small cell lung cancer in various stages of development. In a person afflicted with lung cancer, the production and processing of volatile organic compounds is changed metabolically, and then exhaled.

Dogs are also able to detect the presence of volatile organic compounds and differentiate between people with lung cancer and those without. In 2006, researchers showed dogs could be trained to smell cancer on the breath of patients with 99 percent accuracy.

In developing this test, the research team first looked at the sensor results from 70 percent of the study group. These results were analyzed, and then a predictive model was formed to use on the remaining 30 percent of the group. In three out of four cases, the predictive model was able to predict the presence of the cancer, regardless of age, sex or race.

One noted drawback is that in some cases the testing resulted in false positives. The test showed a person to have early stages of lung cancer, when the person was, in fact, healthy.

The prototype device in this instance was developed by Peter Mazzone, a Doctor at the The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, in collaboration with ChemSensing, located in Champaign, Illinois. The private company customizes Metalloporphyrins, a family of chemically reactive dyes that are sensitive to volatile organic compounds.