Abstract
An early diagnosis and appropriate treatment are crucial in reducing mortality among people suffering from cancer. There is a lack of characteristic early clinical symptoms in most forms of cancer, which highlights the importance of investigating new methods for its early detection. One of the most promising methods is the analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOCs are a diverse group of carbon-based chemicals that are present in exhaled breath and biofluids and may be collected from the headspace of these matrices. Different patterns of VOCs have been correlated with various diseases, cancer among them. Studies have also shown that cancer cells in vitro produce or consume specific VOCs that can serve as potential biomarkers that differentiate them from noncancerous cells. This review identifies the current challenges in the investigation of VOCs as potential cancer biomarkers, by the critical evaluation of available matrices for the in vivo and in vitro approaches in this field and by comparison of the main extraction and detection techniques that have been applied to date in this area of study. It also summarises complementary in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro studies conducted to date in order to try to identify volatile biomarkers of cancer.
Highlights
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world
There is a lack of characteristic early clinical symptoms in most cancer types that could lead to early detection of the disease [2,3,4,5]
The aim is to apply differential volatile organic compounds (VOCs) of cancer to a device that will enable the detection of cancer in the patient with 100% certainty, ideally noninvasively, as the less invasive a procedure is, the cheaper and more simple it will be to conduct
Summary
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world. It has been estimated that there were 7.6 million fatal cases of cancer (13% of all deaths) and around 12.4 million new cancer cases in the year 2008 worldwide. A new, noninvasive method of lung cancer screening, spiral computer tomography, which has been shown to detect cancer that is curable by surgery, is accompanied by a risk of exposure to radiation, high false-positive rates, and the possibility of overdiagnosis [6]. One of the most promising metabolomic approaches is the analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which could potentially serve as a safe, noninvasive (at least for breath and some biofluid samples), and specific test for the early detection of different types of cancer. This review firstly discusses sample matrices that were used in the studies of potential VOC biomarkers of cancer and critically evaluates in vitro and in vivo approaches applied in this field. The main extraction techniques and analytical techniques that have been applied to date in the area of the studies of potential volatile biomarkers of cancer are compared
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