The breakthrough test can detect cancer markers found in your breath (Image: BILLY BOYLE)
By detecting cancer earlier, potentially before symptoms have even appeared, tens of thousands of lives could be saved every year.
It would also reduce the need for costly and invasive internal investigations, biopsies and scans.
Multiple large-scale clinical trials, partly funded by the Government, are under way involving thousands of patients.
The aim is to identify signatures for a range of tumours using a pioneering chemical sensor on a silicon microchip.
Early detection of cancer is crucial to boost chances of survival (Image: GETTY)
Sensitivity and accuracy is the holy grail of cancer diagnostics.
Although experiments in using breath tests for cancer have been carried out before, researchers say the latest technology is the most sensitive to date, and also the most accurate for picking up early signs of the disease.
The microchip used can be reprogrammed to detect different biomarkers.
The first “breath biopsies” will aim to detect lung, bowel, oesophagus and stomach cancer.
Trials will later be expanded to include cancers of the pancreas, prostate and bladder.
Cancer leaves a chemical footprint that can be detected in breath (Image: GETTY)
Research has started on 4,000 patients to identify lung cancer – most often detected at a late stage when it can be terminal – in a project known as the LuCID trial.
Details will be showcased at two leading cancer conferences later this month in Toronto and Paris.
Last month experts at Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre, the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust started recruiting people to identify breath biomarkers for early detection across a range of other cancers, starting with oesophageal and stomach cancer.
They plan to expand this to include prostate, pancreatic and bladder cancer and it is hoped there will be close to 200 participants in each study.
A third study, led by experts at Warwick University and the University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust is recruiting 1,400 trial subjects for the Intercept trial aimed at the early identification of colorectal cancer – currently detected late in 90 per cent of cases.
The new cancer-detecting tests could be brought out within a few years (Image: GETTY)
Research shows early diagnosis can dramatically improve survival rates, with 93 per cent of patients surviving five years following early intervention.
Dr Pippa Corrie, of the Government’s National Institute of Health Research, which is helping to fund the trials, and a leading cancer expert at Cambridge University Hospitals said: “The NIHR is leading a strong programme of studies aimed at early detection of cancer.
Ground-breaking technologies that analyse the chemicals in our breath are currently being tested in large-scale trials across the UK.
“Our aim is for this research to help diagnose and treat cancers earlier, making a real difference to survival.”
Dr Robert Rintoul, lung cancer specialist at Royal Papworth Hospital, who is running the LuCID breath test trial for lung cancer at 26 sites across the UK, plus sites in Greece, Italy and Belgium, said: “I am very excited about this work.
“We don’t have a good technique for identifying early stage lung cancer.”
A computer illustration visualises colorectal cancer which is shown in red (Image: GETTY STOCK)
It has long been known that there are distinctive chemical markers from cancers that are passed into our airways and exhaled when we breathe out.
Previous research has shown these can be detected using bulky apparatus but to date results have not been very accurate.
It is thought the new breathalyser kit will be small and easy enough to use in a doctor’s surgery or on a hospital ward.
Dr Rintoul added: “We hope we will be able to detect cancers with more specificity and more sensitivity than previous tests and the new breath collection mask and microchip are at the heart of this.
“Sensitivity and accuracy is the holy grail of cancer diagnostics.
“Although there have been other breath tests trialled, we hope this new technology will be more sensitive and accurate for detecting early stage disease.”
The research has been developed by Cambridge-based diagnostics company Owlstone Medical, whose scientific advisers include Sir Bruce Ponder, professor of oncology at the University of Cambridge, Dr Christian Frezza, of the Medical Research Council Unit at the University of Cambridge, and Dr Chris Mayhew, director of the Institute of Breath Research at the University of Innsbruck and lead molecular physicist at the University of Birmingham.
Surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are the three main cancer treatments (Image: GETTY)
Technology behind machine that can sniff out tumours
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Breath is collected in a receiver mask which pools samples into metal cartridges. Samples can be analysed, removed and stored. It is hoped that in future the mask will be able to analyse the sample in real time.
WHAT DOES IT MEASURE?
The new technology assesses markers in the breath known as Volatile Organic Compounds.
VOCs are contained in every breath and over recent years increasing numbers have been linked to certain cancers.
Sniffing out VOCs is also how animals such as dogs and fruit flies have been shown to identify the presence of some cancers.
The samples are then fed through an analyser which is based on pioneering technology known as Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometry.
This will distinguish between the compounds according to the differences in the speed they move through a gas. The kit also contains a microchip which can be reprogrammed to identify the specific “fingerprint” of different cancer types.
Around 520 children and young people die from cancer every year in the UK (Image: GETTY)
WHAT EXACTLY IS A VOC?
The body produces a wide range of Volatile Organic Compounds that reflect cellular activity.
These are altered by disease, making them potential biomarkers in the breath.
VOCs, which each have a distinct odour, can also be picked up in blood, urine, faeces, spit and sweat. Biomarkers of this kind have the potential to revolutionise medicine by allowing diagnosis of a broad range of diseases through a simple non-invasive test.
HOW ACCURATE IS IT?
The sensitivity of the equipment means VOCs can be picked up at low parts per billion and in some cases per trillion.
This means that it is so selective that even in a typical breath sample containing hundreds of VOCs unrelated to the disease of interest, it can ignore “chemical noise” and identify only disease biomarkers of interest – which means there is less chance of false readings.
