an electronic “nose” that detects chemicals in the breath of lung cancer patients may help distinguish between those who will and who will not respond to immunotherapy, a new study suggests.
in the small study, the enose was better at identifying the patients likely to benefit from immunotherapy than the current gold standard test, researchers report in the
annals of oncology
.
“we can differentiate between responders and non-responders in patients with non-small cell lung cancer with an accuracy of 85%,” said study co-author dr. mirte muller, a researcher at the netherlands cancer institute in amsterdam.
that means that for 24% of patients in the study, immunotherapy could be skipped because it would not help, muller said in an email.
the enose didn’t sniff out all the non-responders, muller said, noting that “44% of patients who did not respond (to immunotherapy) had a positive test.”
lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in men and women, according to the american cancer society. most lung cancers, 85%, are non-small cell lung cancers, which are slower growing than small-cell lung cancers.
the researchers suspected that chemicals patients exhale while breathing could provide clues to whether immunotherapy might be beneficial.