Source: www.deccanherald.com
Author: staff

A nose, that can sniff cancer at an early stage, thus, leading to wide variety of treatments enhancing a patients chances of recovery has been developed by the scientist at Israel Institute of Technology.

The “sniffing nose” is very close to a dog’s olfactory system, a media report here said.

The artificial nose is developed on the grounds that dogs are capable of detecting cancer in earlier stages by sniffing the patient’s breath and could also identify molecules created by a tumor that circulate through their blood to the lungs, and leave the body when they exhale.

Results of clinical trials of the ‘artificial nose ‘ done on some 100 persons — 62 cancer patients — reveals that it is capable of efficiently and accurately distinguishing between cancer patients and healthy people and could even detect the location and nature of the tumor.

“These findings are impressive, but initial, and must be verified in research on a larger number of patients”, Professor Abraham Kuten, Co-researcher and Director of the Rambam Medical Center Oncology Institute, told the news portal.

The clinical trials were conducted at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa by a team led by Dr Hossam Haick of the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute

The patients taking part in the experiment suffered from lung, breast, colon, prostate, head and neck cancer. The participants breathed into bags which were transferred to the Technion for testing and the results were compared to details of the patients’ diseases according to the hospital’s records. All samples were tested by the electronic nose and the findings showed that each type of cancer has a particular pattern of characteristic components.

In future trials, the nose will be directly sniffing the patients’ breath. The ‘electronic nose’ was able to distinguish between healthy and sick patients, and could also identify different types of cancer at a 92 per cent success rate, ‘Ynetnews’ reported.