Volatile Organic Metabolites Identify Patients with Breast Cancer, Cyclomastopathy and Mammary Gland Fibroma

Abstract

The association between cancer and volatile organic metabolites in exhaled breaths has attracted increasing attention from researchers. The present study reports on a systematic study of gas profiles of metabolites in human exhaled breath by pattern recognition methods. Exhaled breath was collected from 85 patients with histologically confirmed breast disease (including 39 individuals with infiltrating ductal carcinoma, 25 individuals with cyclomastopathy and from 21 individuals with mammary gland fibroma) and 45 healthy volunteers. Principal component analysis and partial least squares discriminant analysis were used to process the final data. The volatile organic metabolites exhibited significant differences between breast cancer and normal controls, breast cancer and cyclomastopathy, and breast cancer and mammary gland fibroma; 21, 6, and 8 characteristic metabolites played decisive roles in sample classification, respectively (P < 0.05). Three volatile organic metabolites in the exhaled air, 2,5,6-trimethyloctane, 1,4-dimethoxy-2,3-butanediol, and cyclohexanone, distinguished breast cancer patients from healthy individuals, mammary gland fibroma patients, and patients with cyclomastopathy (P < 0.05). The identified three volatile organic metabolites associated with breast cancer may serve as novel diagnostic biomarkers.

Investigation of VOCs associated with different characteristics of breast cancer cells

“…Different studies analyzed the potentiality of sensors for the screening of breast cancer patients by breath VOCs analysis 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 . However, breath analysis may not be an optimal approach to detect the VOCs fingerprint associated to specific molecular alterations of cancer cells.…”

“…Among compounds increased in tumor breast cancer cells the more represented classes are the hydrocarbons, and some of these (2,4-Dimethylheptene, 1,3-Di-tert-butylbenzene, and 2-Xylene) have been previously detected in breath samples of breast and lung cancer patients 6 7 35 . Previous reports of breath biomarkers associated with breast cancer patients identified hydrocarbons, in particular alkanes and alkane derivatives (methyl-alkanes), as main VOCs breast cancer biomarkers 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 .…”

“…Among them, the analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emerges as a new frontier for cancer diagnosis in particular because it is non-invasive and potentially inexpensive. The concept has been demonstrated with different types of cancer 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 . In particular, the diagnostic accuracy of VOCs detected in the breath of patients bearing breast cancer lesions has been extensively analyzed 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 .…”

Volatile Organic Compound Based Probe for Induced Volatolomics of Cancers

“…Volatolomics, the study of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced by living systems, is an emerging field of research that offers promise for exploring biological processes in real‐time . Within this framework, analysis of VOCs in exhaled breath samples has been investigated for cancer diagnosis and patient stratification for personalised anticancer therapy . However, high inter‐individual variability as well as inter‐laboratory disparities for sample preparation and analysis represent major hurdles that still limit the use of volatolomics in clinics.…”

Exhaled gases online measurements for esophageal cancer patients and healthy people by proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry

“…Breath test is convenient and non-invasive, so it has great potential in the cancer screening and auxiliary diagnosis 11 . In recent years, breath test has attracted increasing attention from researchers [12][13][14][15][16][17] . In previous study, the sampling procedure usually employed bags to store the breath gas for a long time, which can suffer from partial degradation of breath metabolites or the introduction of impurities.…”