Hyphenated and unconventional methods for searching volatile cancer biomarkers

Abstract

Volatile organic compounds produced inside the body provide valuable information about human state of health and they are detected in breath, blood and urine samples. Therefore, volatile biomarker analysis seems to become accurate and fast method for tumour detection. So far, there are known several volatile organic compounds (VOCs) recognized as potential cancer biomarkers. For the detection of VOCs different analytical techniques are used. The most popular is gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC/MS). More recently, selected ion flow tube mass spectrometry (SIFT-MS), proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) and ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) are also applied for biomarker research. Besides typical instrumental methods used for VOCs analysis, unconventional methods such as sensitive canine sense of smell can be used. In recent years, this very sensitive scent is also used for cancer biomarker detection. Dogs are trained to recognize the smell of skin, breath or urine samples from patient with different kind of cancer from the control group. The application of dogs’ smell for the preliminary screening of tumour in human body is painless, noninvasive and fast method. Additionally, it does not need the preconcentration of analytes before the analysis.