MSU researchers discover honeybees can detect lung cancer
Michigan State University researchers have discovered that honeybees can detect biomarkers or chemical concentrations associated with lung cancer in human breath. The researchers have also shown that the honeybees can distinguish between different lung cancer cell types using only the ‘smell’ of the cell cultures. These findings could be used as a model for developing new tests to diagnose lung cancer early.
“Insects have an amazing sense of smell the same way dogs do,” said Debajit Saha, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering and MSU’s Institute for Quantitative Health Science and Engineering.
Saha and his team wanted to see if honeybees could distinguish between the chemicals in human breath from someone who was healthy compared to someone with lung cancer. Elyssa Cox, Saha’s former lab manager, and Michael Parnas, a doctoral candidate working in Saha’s lab, developed a “recipe” for a synthetic breath mixture using different levels of six compounds such as trichloroethylene and 2-methylheptane to create the chemical makeup of the breath of someone with lung cancer and a synthetic healthy breath mixture.
“It took a steady hand to create the recipe,” said Cox. “We tested the synthetic lung cancer versus healthy human breath mixtures on approximately 20 bees.”
