LUNG CANCER: Volatile nanoflakes to detect it

Exhaled air contains chemical clues about what is happening inside the body, especially in diseases like lung cancer. The design of new non-invasive diagnostic tools, detecting these compounds, could promote earlier diagnosis and improve patient outcomes.

The study: the Chinese team present here ultrasensitive sensors at the nanoscale which, in small-scale tests, successfully distinguished this key change in the chemistry of exhaled air from lung cancer patients. A development that exploits the many gases, such as water vapor and carbon dioxide, as well as other compounds suspended in the air. The team reveals in particular that:

• Decreases in an expired chemical, isoprene, may indicate the presence of lung cancer.
• The study manages to overcome a challenge, being able to detect such small changes: to achieve this,
• the sensor must be sensitive to the point of detecting isoprene levels in the order of a few parts per billion (ppb);
• the sensor must also separate isoprene from other volatile chemical compounds;
• the sensor must be able to withstand the natural humidity of exhaled air.

The team is in fact developing a series of sensors based on indium oxide nanosheetsincluding a particular type, called “Pt@InNiOx” because of the platinum (Pt), indium (In) and nickel (Ni) that it contains, proves to be the most efficient at precisely:

1. detect such low isoprene levels;
2. react to isoprene more than other volatile compounds present in the breath;
3. maintain consistent performance over a large number of uses.

How does it “work”? The structure of these nanosheets, their electrochemical properties linked to the platinum (Pt) nanoaggregates uniformly anchored on these nanosheets catalyze the activation of isoprene detection, allowing this ultrasensitive performance.

Obvious medical implications : incorporated into a portable detection device, the nanosheets made it possible to detect cancer from the breath of 13 diagnosed patients.

This new detection technology represents a major advance in non-invasive lung cancer screening, with the potential to improve outcomes and save lives.