A research team led by Prof. CHU Yannan from Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a multi-medium approach (MMA) to identify reproducible volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in lung cancer cells.

The findings of this study, published in Analytical Chemistry, offer new insights into non-invasive lung cancer diagnosis through the analysis of VOCs.

VOCs present in human body odor have been a key focus in health research, particularly for non-invasive lung cancer screening. Despite decades of studies on exhaled VOCs, researchers have yet to establish reliable biomarkers, with inconsistent results reported even in in vitro cancer cell culture analyses.

To address this, the team proposed introduced a combination of three different culture media—RPMI 1640, DMEM, and Ham's F12—along with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) for untargeted VOC analysis.

"The newly proposed MMA allowed us to identify several key VOCs that could reliably distinguish lung cancer cells (A549) from normal lung cells (BEAS-2B)," said Dr. GE Dianlong, a member of the research team.

While traditional single-medium approaches (SMA) identified dozens of differential VOCs, the MMA revealed only two reproducible VOCs (isomers of methyl butanol), which were found to be at lower levels in the cancerous A549 cells. Further validation through targeted detection in subcutaneous and primary tumor tissues in animal models confirmed these results.

"This new approach is akin to creating a universal 'fingerprint' for cancer cells, offering hope for more accurate and non-invasive lung cancer detection in the future," Dr. Ge added. "These findings could also help advance tumor gas biopsies and enhance diagnostic methods in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)."