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 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 U6 - 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 - TY - GEN A1 - Nehls, Irene A1 - Schallschmidt, Kristin A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Fischer-Tenhagen, C. A1 - Johnen, D. A1 - Leschber, G. A1 - Frese, S. A1 - Neudecker, J. A1 - Walles, T. ED - Schüler, C. ED - Püschel, K. T1 - BIOAIR - Ein interdisziplinäres Projekt zur Bestimmung von Krebsmarkern in der Atemluft N2 - Wie viele Forschergruppen, haben auch wir uns das langfristige Ziel gesetzt, einen Beitrag bei der Beantwortung der Frage zu leisten, was Hunde riechen, wenn sie Krebs erschnüffeln. Dabei sollen die Hunde nicht nur anzeigen, ob eine Atemluftprobe positiv oder negativ ist, sondern sie sollen auch aktiv eingebunden werden in den systematischen Suchprozess nach detektierbaren Biomarkern. So ist geplant, dass mittels eines präparativen Fraktionssammlers definierte Schnitte des Gaschromatogramms einzeln oder in möglichen Kombinationen auf das Adsorbervlies gebracht werden, um im Hundetraining eingesetzt zu werden. In analoger Weise könnte auch mit spezifischen Kandidatensubstanzen verfahren werden. PY - 2015 SN - 978-3-8300-8763-2 N1 - Serientitel: Forschungsergebnisse aus dem Institut für Rechtsmedizin der Universität Hamburg – Series title: Forschungsergebnisse aus dem Institut für Rechtsmedizin der Universität Hamburg VL - 30 SP - 93 EP - 101 PB - Dr. Kovac AN - OPUS4-33165 LA - deu AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -