Abstract
Cancer is fast becoming the most important cause of death worldwide, its mortality being mostly caused by late or wrong diagnosis. Novel strategies have been developed to identify early signs of cancer in a minimally obtrusive way, including the Electronic Nose (E-Nose) technology, user-friendly, cost- and time-saving alternative to classical approaches. This systematic review, conducted under the PRISMA guidelines, identified 60 articles directly dealing with the E-Nose application in cancer research published up to 31 January 2020. Among these works, the vast majority reported successful E-Nose use for diagnosing Lung Cancer, showing promising results especially when employing the Aeonose tool, discriminating subjects with Lung Cancer from controls in more than 80% of individuals, in most studies. In order to tailor the main limitations of the proposed approach, including the application of the protocol to advanced stage of cancer, sample heterogeneity and massive confounders, future studies should be conducted on early stage patients, and on larger cohorts, as to better characterize the specific breathprint associated with the various subtypes of cancer. This would ultimately lead to a better and faster diagnosis and to earlier treatment, possibly reducing the burden associated to such conditions.
Highlights
Cancer is fast becoming the leading cause of death in higher income countries, with its mortality quickly reaching that of cardiovascular diseases [1]
Of the 268 articles initially retrieved, based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria applied, 60 records have been retained for inclusion in the qualitative synthesis foreseen by the systematic review. The majority of such works dealt with lung cancer, the recognized major cause of death for cancer around the world for both men and women [18]
Other records included studies dealing with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), colorectal cancer (CRC), Ovarian Cancer (OC), prostate cancer (PC), gastric cancer (GC), bladder cancer (BlC), malignant melanoma (MM), breast cancer (BrC), kidney cancer (KC)
Summary
Cancer is fast becoming the leading cause of death in higher income countries, with its mortality quickly reaching that of cardiovascular diseases [1]. The magnitude of the problem has driven the scientists from all over the world to face the implementation of new strategies and tools for the detection, even at early stages, of various types of cancer from biological samples This would facilitate early diagnosis, enabling the adoption of treatment strategies tailored at fighting the disease as fast as possible, increasing the possibility of success. One of such strategies is based on the development of the so-called “Electronic Nose” (E-Nose) systems, tools mimicking the functioning of the biological sense of smell whose first prototypes dated back to early 1980s [3]. Such devices have been entering the universe of translational and clinical research as a useful alternative for analyzing gaseous samples
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