A University of Pennsylania School of Medicine-Monell Chemical Senses Center collaborative study found that body fluid odors can be used to identify animals with lung cancer tumors. The findings set the stage for studies to identify potential diagnostic biomarkers in the urine of human lung cancer patients.
"Finding new ways to screen for early lung cancers in patients at risk, such as smokers, is one of the best ways we have to reduce the high death rate from this disease," said Steven M. Albelda, MD, William Maul Measey Professor of Medicine, a senior author on the paper published recently in PLoS One.
"Using the same chemical approaches as in this paper, we hope to be able to detect odors in urine of smokers that could be used to identify lung cancer at a very early stage." Anil Vachani, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine was also a co-author.
For more information refer to the Monell Center news release:
http://www.monell.org/news/news_releases/lung_cancer_odors
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