Affiliations 

  • 1 Centre of Excellence for Advanced Sensor Technology, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Arau, Perlis, Malaysia. thriumanireena@yahoo.com
  • 2 Centre of Excellence for Advanced Sensor Technology, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Arau, Perlis, Malaysia. ammarzakaria@unimap.edu.my
  • 3 Cell and Tissue Engineering Lab (CTEL), Department of Biotechnology Engineering, Kulliyyah of Engineering, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 4 Centre of Excellence for Advanced Sensor Technology, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Arau, Perlis, Malaysia
  • 5 Department of Respiratory, Hospital Tuanku Fauziah, Jalan Kolam, Kangar, Perlis, Malaysia
  • 6 School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, United Kingdom
BMC Cancer, 2018 04 02;18(1):362.
PMID: 29609557 DOI: 10.1186/s12885-018-4235-7

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from exhaled breath from human bodies have been proven to be a useful source of information for early lung cancer diagnosis. To date, there are still arguable information on the production and origin of significant VOCs of cancer cells. Thus, this study aims to conduct in-vitro experiments involving related cell lines to verify the capability of VOCs in providing information of the cells.

METHOD: The performances of e-nose technology with different statistical methods to determine the best classifier were conducted and discussed. The gas sensor study has been complemented using solid phase micro-extraction-gas chromatography mass spectrometry. For this purpose, the lung cancer cells (A549 and Calu-3) and control cell lines, breast cancer cell (MCF7) and non-cancerous lung cell (WI38VA13) were cultured in growth medium.

RESULTS: This study successfully provided a list of possible volatile organic compounds that can be specific biomarkers for lung cancer, even at the 24th hour of cell growth. Also, the Linear Discriminant Analysis-based One versus All-Support Vector Machine classifier, is able to produce high performance in distinguishing lung cancer from breast cancer cells and normal lung cells.

CONCLUSION: The findings in this work conclude that the specific VOC released from the cancer cells can act as the odour signature and potentially to be used as non-invasive screening of lung cancer using gas array sensor devices.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.