Scent Test Helps Screening Pancreatic Cancer Patients Earlier

The proclivity of microorganisms like C.elegans towards their food source (bacteria) found in patients' urine aids in the early detection of pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to detect early. The ability of nematodes to detect an odor in urine samples had been used to develop a novel cancer diagnostic method (N-NOSE), in the earlier studies.

As of now, with a five-year survival rate of only 9%, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the deadliest diseases. Except for pancreatic cancer, other cancers have already been screened through scent tests using animals or microorganisms, including Caenorhabditis elegans.

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‘The chemotaxis of C.elegans in the urine of patients aids in the early detection of pancreatic cancer.’

Caenorhabditis elegans (C elegans) has been introduced as a new strategy, like sniffer dogs. C elegans has enough sensitivity and specificity for clinical use, and it has a lot of promise as a pancreatic cancer diagnostic tool, notably for early-stage pancreatic cancer.

An open-label study involving 83 cases, from patients with very early-stage pancreatic cancer across Japan, shown the significant differences in stage 0–IA after surgical removal. In patients with pancreatic cancer and healthy volunteers, preoperative urine samples had a significantly higher chemotaxis index than postoperative urine samples. The biological diagnosis had a reported sensitivity of 95.8%, which was acceptable even in patients in the early stages of cancer, according to Dr. Hideshi Ishii of The Osaka University.

Furthermore, reports have shown that this test has a high sensitivity in cases of gastrointestinal cancers, as well as negative postoperative changes. Furthermore, in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer, this test was able to distinguish urine. As a result, this method may be useful in detecting patients with PDAC in their early stages.

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However, due to the extreme difficulty of collecting urine samples from such patients, no study has yet used this method to detect very early-stage PDAC. To investigate the clinical value of a cancer detection system involving C. elegans, they organized a nationwide clinical group that included high-volume centers throughout Japan and prospectively collected serum and urine samples from patients with very early-stage PDAC.

The Ishii Research Team concluded in their Oncotarget Research Output "the current study observed higher chemotaxis of C. elegans in patients with very-early-stage PDAC, suggesting its potential for use as a standard method for detecting early-stage cancer. Nonetheless, the underlying mechanisms for this chemotaxis should be clarified to obtain information that could help elucidate the biological characteristics of cancer."

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Source-Medindia

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