Locusts can smell the difference between cancer cells and healthy cells, as well as distinguish between different cancer cell lines.
Patients don't need to worry about the Locusts. According to the researchers, this work could provide the basis for devices that use insect sensory neurons to enable the early detection of cancer.
The authors of the new research said that they are not as far-fetched as they might seem.
People have grown used to technology that surpasses our natural senses. Telescopes and microscopes reveal worlds that are not visible. It is easy to overlook the performance of our natural tools when we see engineered devices.
"Noses are still state of the art," said Debajit. There isn't anything like them when it comes to gas detection.
The smell of drugs, explosives, and even COVID-19 can be detected by dogs and their super- Sniffers.
Even though scientists are working on technology that can mimic the sense of smell, they can't compete with the speed, sensitivity and specificity of biological olfaction.
"People have been working on electronic noses for more than 15 years, but they're still not close to achieving what biology can do in a seamless manner," said Saha, who also works in the Institute of Quantitative Health Science and Engineering.
Early detection of diseases such as cancer, which can save lives, is possible because of the lack of gas-sensitive devices. Patients with cancer in its first stage have a good chance of surviving. If it isn't caught until stage 4, the numbers will plummet.
Cancer cells create different chemical compounds when they work and grow. The compounds could be detected in exhaled breath if they make it to the patient.
It would be possible to detect multiple cancer types and even which stage the disease is in with a device. It's not close to being used in a clinical setting.
They are working on a new approach. They thought that instead of trying to engineer something that works like biology, they should start with the solutions biology has already built. The team is using the insect brain to diagnose diseases.
He said that the frontier was almost unexplored.
Locusts were chosen as their biological component for a number of reasons. Locusts have been used as model organisms for a long time. Researchers have learned a lot about their olfactory sensors and neural circuits. Locusts are bigger and more rugged than fruit flies.
The combination of features makes it easy for the researchers to attach the electrodes to the brain. The scientists used the insects' responses to gas samples from healthy and cancer cells to create chemical profiles of the different cells.
This isn't the first time the team has worked on this. Christopher Contag, the director of IQ, said that while at Washington University in St. Louis, he led research that detected explosives with Locusts.
He was told that we would detect cancer when he came here. "'I'm sure your Locusts can do it,'" said Contag, who is also a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and in the Department of Microbial and Genetics.
One of Contag's research focuses was to understand why cells from mouth cancers had different appearance under his team's microscopes. His lab was able to account for the optical differences. It was found that some of those compounds were volatile and could become airborne.
It was a good idea to look at them from a volatile perspective.
It was the perfect platform to test that. The two groups collaborated to find out how well the locusts could differentiate between healthy and cancer cells.
The normal cells were expected to look different than the cancer cells. The bugs were able to distinguish three different types of cancer.
Although the team's results focused on cancers of the mouth, the researchers believe their system would work with most cancer types. Steven Chang is the director of the Henry Ford Head and Neck Cancer program and the team is starting a collaboration with him.
The researchers want to bring the honeybee's chemical sense power into the fold. The honeybee brains used by the team have promising results.
People don't need to worry about insects in their doctor's office. The researchers want to develop a closed and portable sensor with just the biological components needed to sense and analyze volatile compounds.
"We should use every possible tool to get there, whether it's engineered or provided to us by millions of years of natural selection," Contag said. Cancer will be a cure if we succeed.
More information: Alexander Farnum et al, Harnessing insect olfactory neural circuits for noninvasive detection of human cancer, BioRxiv (2022). DOI: 10.1101/2022.05.24.493311
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