TY - JOUR A1 - Schallschmidt, Kristin A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Zwaka, H. A1 - Menzel, R. A1 - Johnen, D. A1 - Fischer-Tenhagen, C. A1 - Rolff, J. A1 - Nehls, Irene T1 - In vitro cultured lung cancer cells are not suitable for animal-based breath biomarker detection JF - Journal of breath research N2 - In vitro cultured lung cancer cell lines were investigated regarding the possible identification of volatile organic compounds as potential biomarkers. Gas samples from the headspace of pure culture medium and from the cultures of human lung adenocarcinoma cell lines A549 and Lu7466 were exposed to polypropylene fleece in order to absorb odour components. Sniffer dogs were trained with loaded fleeces of both cell lines, and honey bees were trained with fleeces exposed to A549. Afterwards, their ability to distinguish between cell-free culture medium odour and lung cancer cell odour was tested. Neither bees nor dogs were able to discriminate between odours from the cancer cell cultures and the pure culture medium. Solid phase micro extraction followed by gas chromatography with mass selective detection produced profiles of volatiles from the headspace offered to the animals. The profiles from the cell lines were largely similar; distinct differences were based on the decrease of volatile culture medium components due to the cells' metabolic activity. In summary, cultured lung cancer cell lines do not produce any biomarkers recognizable by animals or gas chromatographic analysis. KW - A549 KW - Honey bees KW - Odour discrimination task KW - Sniffer dogs KW - Solid phase microextraction KW - Volatile organic compounds KW - Volatilome PY - 2015 DO - https://doi.org/10.1088/1752-7155/9/2/027103 SN - 1752-7155 SN - 1752-7163 VL - 9 IS - 2 SP - 027103-1 EP - 027103-10 PB - IOP CY - Bristol AN - OPUS4-34161 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schallschmidt, Kristin A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Jung, Christian A1 - Bremser, Wolfram A1 - Nehls, Irene A1 - Leschber, G. A1 - Frese, S. A1 - Walles, T. A1 - Neudecker, J. T1 - Comparison of volatile organic compounds from lung cancer patients and healthy controls—challenges and limitations of an observational study JF - Journal of Breath Research N2 - The design and operation of an observational study on the profiles of volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the breath of 37 lung cancer patients and 23 healthy controls of similar age is outlined. The necessity to quantify each VOC considered as potential disease marker on basis of individual calibration is elaborated and the quality control measures required to maintain reproducibility in breath sampling and subsequent instrumental trace VOC analysis using SPME-GC-MS over a study period of 14 months are described. 24 VOC were quantified on basis of their previously suggested potential as cancer markers. The breath concentration levels of aromatic compounds was expectedly increased in smokers while lung cancer patients displayed significantly increased levels of oxygenated VOC such as aldehydes, 2-butanone and 1-butanol. Though sets of selected oxygenated VOC displayed sensitivities and specificities between 80 and 90% using linear discriminant analysis with leave-one-out cross validation the effective selectivity of the breath VOC approach with regard to cancer detection is clearly limited. Results were discussed against the background of the literature on volatile cancer marker investigations and the prospects to link increased VOC levels in patients’ breath with approaches to employ sniffer dogs. Experiences from this study and the literature suggest that the current state of breath VOC based discrimination between cancer patients and healthy controls is hardly improvable. Observational studies tend to observe significant differences mostly in levels of certain oxygenated VOC but without resolution required for practical application. Any step towards practicable exploitation of VOC profile differences for illness detection would have to solve current restrictions set by the low and variable VOC concentrations. Further challenges are the technical complexity of studies involving breath sampling and possibly the limited capability of current analytical procedures to detect instable marker candidates. KW - Breath KW - Volatile organic compounds KW - Marker KW - Cancer KW - Gas chromatography KW - Solid phase microextraction KW - Volatilome PY - 2016 DO - https://doi.org/10.1088/1752-7155/10/4/046007 SN - 1752-7155 SN - 1752-7163 VL - 10 IS - 4 SP - Article 046007, 1 EP - 17 PB - IOP Publishing AN - OPUS4-37801 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -