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REVIEW article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Cancer Molecular Targets and Therapeutics
Volume 14 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fonc.2024.1448760
Potential Urinary Volatile Organic Compounds as Screening Markers in Cancer -A Review
Provisionally accepted- University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Early detection of cancer typically facilitates improved patient outcomes; however, many cancers are not easily diagnosed at an early stage. One potential route for developing new, non-invasive methods of cancer detection is by testing for cancer-related volatile organic compounds (VOCs) biomarkers in patients' urine. In this review, 44 studies covering the use and/or identification of cancer-related VOCs were examined, including studies which examined multiple types of cancer simultaneously, as well as diverse study designs. Among these studies the most studied cancers included prostate cancer (29% of papers), lung cancer (22%), breast cancer (20%), and bladder cancer (18%), with a smaller number of studies focused on colorectal cancer, cervical cancer, skin, liver cancer and others. Importantly, most studies which produced a VOC-based model of cancer detection observed a combined sensitivity and specificity above 150%, indicating that urine-based methods of cancer detection show considerable promise as a diagnostic tool. Mass spectrometry (MS) and electronic noses (eNose) were the most employed tools used in the detection of VOCs, while animal-based models were less common. In terms of VOCs of interest, 47 chemical species identified as correlated with various types of cancer in at least two unrelated papers, some of which were consistently up-or down-regulated in cancer patients, and which may represent useful targets for future studies investing urinary VOC biomarkers of cancer. Overall, it was concluded that research in this field has shown promising results, but more work may be needed before the widespread adoption of these techniques takes place.
Keywords: Cancer, Volatile organic compound, Gas chromatography mass spectrometry, electronic nose, diagnostics, Early detection, animal olfaction
Received: 13 Jun 2024; Accepted: 08 Nov 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Goertzen, Kidane, Ahmed and Aliani. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Michel Aliani, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
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