ArticleiScience2022
Ants detect cancer cells through volatile organic compounds.
Article in iScience, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Remote Medical Scent Detection of Cancer and Infectious Diseases With Dogs and Rats: A Systematic Review.Integrative cancer therapiesPooled it
- Trial
- Volatile Organic Compounds in Biological Matrices as a Sensitive Weapon in Cancer Diagnosis.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Cercus Electric Stimulation Enables Cockroach with Trajectory Control and Spatial Cognition Training.Cyborg and bionic systems (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Article
- A scientometric analysis of research trends, visualization, and emerging patterns in canine olfactory detection for cancer.Veterinary world · 2024Article
- CFA-treated mice induce hyperalgesia in healthy mice via an olfactory mechanism.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2024Article
- Ants act as olfactory bio-detectors of tumours in patient-derived xenograft mice.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Diagnosis by Volatile Organic Compounds in Exhaled Breath in Exhaled Breath from Patients with Gastric and Colorectal Cancers.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- A new detection method for canine and feline cancer using the olfactory system of nematodes.Biochemistry and biophysics reports · 2022Article
- Review
- Emerging roles of cystathionine β-synthase in various forms of cancer.Redox biology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cancer is among the world's leading causes of death. A critical challenge for public health is to develop a noninvasive, inexpensive, and efficient tool for early cancer detection. Cancer cells are characterized by an altered metabolism, producing unique patterns of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can be used as cancer biomarkers. Dogs can detect VOCs via olfactory associative learning, but training dogs is costly and time-consuming. Insects, such as ants, have a refined sense of smell and can be rapidly trained. We show that individual ants need only a few training trials to learn, memorize, and reliably detect the odor of human cancer cells. These performances rely on specific VOC patterns, as shown by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. Our findings suggest that using ants as living tools to detect biomarkers of human cancer is feasible, fast, and less laborious than using other animals.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.