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Tumor Discovery

REVIEW ARTICLE
Volatile organic compounds: A promising new

frontier for cancer screening

1
Alexandra Allard-Coutu * , Kevin Singh , Dawn David , Victoria Dobson ,
1
3
2
Lily Dahmer , and Barbara Heller 5
4
1 Department of General Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa,
Ontario, Canada
2 Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada
3 Department of General Surgery, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
4 Department of Nursing, Hamilton General Hospital, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
5 Department of General Surgery, Division of Surgery, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario,
Canada

Abstract

The late onset of cancer symptoms can cause a significant delay in diagnosis,
impacting patients’ prognosis and quality of life, thus prompting a need for alternative
screening and detection methods. Neoplastic processes cause distinct and immediate
changes to the body’s metabolism, creating unique patterns in the volatile organic
compounds (VOCs) produced and released through exhaled breath. For this reason,
VOC profiles have emerged as diagnostic indicators for several types of malignancies,
facilitating early cancer detection. Both non-invasive and accessible, the analysis of
breath VOCs for cancer screening and detection has gained recognition as a new
*Corresponding author:
Alexandra Allard-Coutu frontier in cancer diagnostics. Using exhaled breath instead of gold-standard cancer
(aallardcoutu@toh.ca) detection and screening tools that are traditionally invasive and uncomfortable
for the patient could be revolutionary in improving patient compliance. Further,
Citation: Allard-Coutu A, Singh
K, David D, Dobson V, Dahmer compared to the gold-standard tools, breath testing is relatively inexpensive, and
L, Heller B. Volatile organic the method of analysis, storage, and transporting the samples is simplified. Several
compounds: A promising new studies have demonstrated the accuracy of VOC analysis in detecting various types
frontier for cancer screening. Tumor
Discov. 2024;3(2):2061. of cancer, including breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, gastric cancer, and
doi: 10.36922/td.2061 melanoma. This article summarizes the evidence supporting VOC analysis for cancer
Received: October 18, 2023 screening and detection. It reviews the clinical utility, current limitations, and necessity
for standardization across all VOC screening tools to ensure the standardization and
Accepted: April 29, 2024
reliability of measurements. The evidence supporting breath tests to detect cancer
Published Online: June 24, 2024 accurately is strong, demonstrating that VOC sampling improves patient outcomes
Copyright: © 2024 Author(s). and decreases the global burden of malignant conditions by detecting cancer earlier.
This is an Open-Access article
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution Keywords: Volatile organic compounds; Breath analysis; Cancer screening; Cancer
License, permitting distribution, diagnostics
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is
properly cited.
Publisher’s Note: AccScience
Publishing remains neutral with 1. Introduction
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional There is an ever-expanding interest in developing tools for accurate screening and early
affiliations. cancer detection. Volatile organic compound (VOC) analysis has emerged as a promising

Volume 3 Issue 2 (2024) 1 doi: 10.36922/td.2061