Raphael Thys
Representational image of honeybee. kojihirano/iStock
Have you ever heard of a bee sniffing out cancer? Believe it or not, honeybees can detect lung cancer in human breath.
Michigan State University researchers made a surprising discovery: honeybees can detect “biomarkers or chemical concentrations” linked to lung cancer in human breath.
“Insects have an amazing sense of smell the same way dogs do,” said Professor Debajit Saha, MSU’s Institute for Quantitative Health Science and Engineering assistant professor.
This isn’t the first time scientists have explored animals’ amazing olfactory abilities for cancer detection. Previous studies have demonstrated that trained canines, rats, insects, and even nematodes may detect cancer.
Honeybee smelling odor sample. (Saha lab)
How the experiment was conducted
For the study, different types of human lung cancer cell cultures were grown in the lab.
They created a special recipe for a “synthetic breath mixture.” This mixture resembled the chemical composition of a healthy person’s breath and that of someone with lung cancer.
The team then plugged extremely small sensors into the brains of honeybees to monitor their brain responses while they smelled various breath mixes.
“It took a steady hand to create the recipe. We tested the synthetic lung cancer versus healthy human breath mixtures on approximately 20 bees,” said Elyssa Cox, who was involved in the study.
Interestingly, researchers observed a difference in honeybee’s neural firing rates when exposed to the odors. The team saw honeybees activating multiple distinct neurons in their brains, which helped them distinguish between synthetic lung cancer breath and healthy breath.
The experiment demonstrated that honeybees could distinguish between “different lung cancer cell types using only the ‘smell’ of the cell cultures.”
The team also tested how well bees detect cancer. Simply put, the goal was to determine the minimal quantity of cancer-indicating chemicals that needed to be present in bees’ breath for them to detect it.
“The honeybees detected very small concentrations; it was a very strong result,” said Saha. “Bees can differentiate between minute changes in the chemical concentrations of the breath mixture which is in the parts per 1 billion range.”
Honeybee brain with a sensor attached. (Saha lab)
Study may pave the way for a non-invasive test
Saha and the team hope this discovery with honeybees will lead to new disease-detection tools based on biological systems and scent analysis.
They also aim to develop a noninvasive test for cancer detection. To do this test, patients would just need to breathe into a device, making it extremely simple. The device would have a sensor inspired by the honeybee brain. This sensor would examine the breath sample for the presence of cancer-related compounds.
This would be able to “wirelessly report back in real time” if cancer compounds were discovered in the breath sample. If successful, this approach might assist in detecting lung cancer early. Furthermore, simple breath tests may be more accessible than complicated scans or biopsies.
“What’s amazing is the honeybees ability to not only detect cancer cells, but also distinguish between cell lines of various types of lung cancer,” said Autumn McLane-Svoboda in the press release. “The future implications for this are huge as our sensor could allow for patients to receive specific cancer diagnoses quickly which is imperative for correct treatment routes.”
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The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.
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Mrigakshi Dixit Mrigakshi is a science journalist who enjoys writing about space exploration, biology, and technological innovations. Her professional experience encompasses both broadcast and digital media, enabling her to learn a variety of storytelling formats. Her work has been featured in well-known publications including Nature India, Supercluster, and Astronomy magazine. If you have pitches in mind, please do not hesitate to email her.