Locusts use their sense of smell to differentiate healthy human cells from cancer cells, and that could lead to earlier detection of the disease, which could improve the chances of recovery.
The insects can pick out individual cancer cell lines, suggesting that the type of cancer can be detected.
There's a lot of potential if we can figure out how to use this in medical devices.
The findings of the study are promising for early cancer detection.
The locust detection, which is measured by changes in their brain activity, is reliable, sensitive, and fast.
Christopher Contag is a microbiologist from Michigan State University.
Cancer will be a cure if we succeed.
Because of the volatile organic compounds we breathe out, scientists know that cancer can change the metabolism of individual cells.
It's important to catch the change early.
We already know a lot about the insects used in smell research because they are frequently used.
The team was able to measure the insect's response to gas samples from different cells and establish signal profiles that represented the chemicals they were smelling.
The profiles created for healthy and cancer cells were different.
The scientists were able to confirm that the cells smell different to the Locusts due to the airborne VOCs given off, and that they looked different to normal cells under a microscope.
The researchers are confident that other types of cancer could be detected in the same way, even though the study only focused on mouth cancer.
The cancer cells looked different than the normal cells. The bugs were able to distinguish three different types of cancer.
When the cancer is detected at stage 4 and has spread to other parts of the body, the survival rate is less than 10%. Patients with cancers that are spotted at stage 1 have an 80-90 percent chance of survival.
Scientists are working to develop a 'bionic nose' device that can detect shifts in VOCs, but they are not close to creating a sensor that matches nature's creation. There is a chance that this discovery could offer another way to look at that research.
The ultimate goal of the team is to hack the insect brain in order to use it for disease diagnosis. The researchers can see a path towards usable detection devices.
"Theoretically, you could breathe through a device, and it would be able to detect and differentiate multiple cancer types and even which stage the disease is in."
It's not close to being used in a clinical setting.
There is a pre-print paper on the research.
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