Dr. Michael Phillips, CEO of Menssana Research, the company that developed the breath test, said, "We developed a breathalyzer that is one billion times more sensitive than those the police use to measure alcohol in the breath. It detects around 200 different chemicals in a person's breath, and some of these chemicals are markers of cancer. A breath test has great advantages over most other medical tests - it is completely safe, painless and non-invasive. All you have to do is breathe gently into a tube for two minutes. There are no potentially dangerous x-rays to worry about, and it will certainly be a lot less expensive than chest imaging."
In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health that will be published in Cancer Biomarkers, researchers studied 404 smokers and ex-smokers aged over 60. The breath test predicted lung cancer with almost the same accuracy as computerized tomography, or chest CT, the best screening test for lung cancer currently available.
Early detection is essential to save lives. Lung cancer affects over 170,000 Americans annually and more than 95% of them are dead within 5 years if the tumor has metastasized to other organs, versus only 20% if the tumor is found while it is still confined to the lung.
The breath test will not be available in the USA until approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but may be available sooner in the European Union.
Menssana Research is currently developing breath tests to detect several other diseases in their early stages, including pulmonary tuberculosis, breast cancer, and ischemic heart disease. The FDA has already approved the Heartsbreath test for heart transplant rejection. Dr. Phillips said he hopes that physicians and patients will eventually consider a breath test the way we think of a chest x-ray or blood test: as an inexpensive and convenient screening test which can detect several diseases in their earliest and most treatable stages.
menssanaresearch/
The new UCSF finding comes from studies with mice genetically engineered to carry some of the genes of the human papilloma virus (HPV), a pathogen that is known to cause human cervical cancer. By comparing cancer progression in these mice compared with gene "knock-out mice" that lacked the antibody receptors normally active on the leukocyte surfaces, Coussens and her colleagues discovered that the receptors were involved for the cancer to progress rapidly.
The new discovery follows one by Coussens and colleagues two years ago, published in "Cancer Cell" (1) that determined that antibody-producing B cells are essential for the harmful redirection of the leukocyte response. The finding startled many in the field because the B cells do not act at the site of inflammation where the leukocytes are located, so they apparently send the crucial signals remotely through the blood's serum. The surprising nature of the discovery and its implications were explored in a June 2005 commentary in "Nature" (2).
A review this month by Coussens and Ting-Ting Tan, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Coussens' laboratory, brings together many related threads of research in this fast-evolving area of inquiry. It was published February 1 in "Current Opinion in Immunology" (3).
Coussens stresses that because of the unique antibody makeup of each person, there is no evidence and no likelihood that periodic booster shots of the immunoglobulin antibody, or even blood transfusions from someone with precancerous tissue could trigger cancer progression in a recipient.
(1) deVesser KE, Korets LV, Coussens LM: De novo carcinogenesis promoted by chronic inflammation is B lymphocyte dependent. "Cancer Cell" 2005, 7:411-423.
(2) Mantovani, Alberto: Inflammation by remote control. "Nature" 2005, 435:752-753.
(3) Tan, Ting-Ting and Coussens, Lisa: Humoral immunity, inflammation and cancer. "Current Opinion in Immunology" 2007: 19:1-8.
ucsf