Lung Cancer Diagnosis: Researchers Develop Device Using Tiny Worms That Will Someday Help Detect the Deadly Disease

Scientists recently reported that a device uses tiny worms to detect cancer cells. Specifically, this "worm-on-a-chip" could someday help medical practitioners noninvasively diagnose cancer at its initial stage.

As specified in a report from EurekAlert!, dogs can use their "incredible sense of smell" to sniff out different cancer forms in human breath, urine, and blood samples.

In a similar way, in the laboratory, a much simpler organism, the roundworm C. elegans, is wriggling its way toward cancer cells by following the track of an odor.

Early diagnosis of cancer is crucial for effective therapy and survival, according to graduate student Nari Jang, who presented the work at the meeting.

Therefore, cancer screening approaches must be quick, easy, cost-oriented, and non-invasive. Currently, doctors diagnose lung cancer through biopsies or imaging tests, although these approaches frequently cannot detect tumors at their earliest stages.

Sniffing Out Human Cancers

Even though dogs can be trained to sniff out human cancers, a similar News-Medical.Net report specified that they are not practical to keep in labs.

Therefore, So Jang and Shin Sik Choi, Ph.D., the project's principal investigator, decided to use worms known as nematodes, which are tiny, easy to grow in the lab, have a unique sense of smell, and develop a non-invasive cancer diagnostic test.

According to Choi, who's at Myongji University in Korea, lung cancer cells produce different odor molecules than normal cells.

It is well-known that the soil-dwelling nematode, C. elegans is repelled or attracted by some odors, so the researchers came up with the idea that the roundworm could be used to detect lung cancer.

Worm-on-a-Chip

Other scientists have placed nematodes in Petri dishes and added drops of human urine, observing that the worms preferentially crawled toward samples of urine from cancer patients. Choi and Jang wanted to make a precise, easy-to-gauge form of the test.

Therefore, the team developed a chip out of polydimethylsiloxane elastomer that comprised a well at every end connected by channels to the central chamber, a related report from the Engineering and Technology specified.

The study authors placed the chip on an agar plate. At one end of the chip, they added one drop of culture media from lung cancer cells, and on the other end, the researchers added media from normal lung fibroblasts.

The researchers placed worms in the central changer, and after one hour, they found that more worms had crawled toward the lung cancer media than the standard media. On the contrary, worms with a mutated smell receptor gene known as odr-3 did not exhibit this preferential behavior.

Cancer Detection

Based on the tests, the study investigators estimated that the device was approximately 70 percent effective at detecting cancer cells in diluted cell culture media.

They expressed hope of being able to express both the preciseness and sensitivity of the approach by using worms exposed previously to cancer cell media and thus have a "memory" of cancer-specific odor molecules.

Once the researchers have optimized the worm-on-a-chip for detecting cultured lung cancer cells, they are planning to move on to examining urine, saliva, or even exhaled breath from people.

Choi explained, they will collaborate with medical doctors to determine if the methods "can detect lung cancer in patients at an early stage." They are planning to test the device on multiple forms of cancer.

Meanwhile, in other research using the worm-on-chip, the study investigators identified the specific odor molecules that attract C. elegans to lung cancer cells, including a volatile organic compound known as 2-ethyl-1-hexanol, which has a floral odor.

Commenting on their work, Jan said, they do not know the reason C. elegans attract lung cancer tissues or 2-ethyl-1-hexanol, although they guess that the odors are similar to the scents from their favorite foods.

Information about the worm on a chip is shown on Health News's YouTube video below:

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