NCT06034730

Breathomics: May it Become an Affordable, New Tool for Early Diagnosis and Screening of Lung Cancer?

Breathomics: May it Become an Affordable, New Tool for Early Diagnosis and Screening of Lung Cancer? An Exploratory Study on a Cohort of 60 Patients

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 60 (actual)
• Sponsor: Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Consorziale Policlinico di Bari · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Breath analysis examining specific patterns of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) has been demonstrated to be able to discriminate lung cancer (LC) patients from healthy controls (HC). However, the existing technology uses complex, expensive, and low throughput analytical platforms to give an offline response, thus preventing its applicability for mass screening. The reliability of a new portable device to enable rapid, on-site LC diagnosis is tested.

Detailed description

The breath of patients with histologically proven NSCLC and healthy controls was sampled into Tedlar bags through a Nafion filter and a one-way mouthpiece. The breath samples in the bags were then analyzed by an automated micro portable gas chromatography device developed in-house, which consisted of a thermal desorption tube, thermal injector, separation column, and photoionization detector, as well as other accessories such as pumps, valves, and a helium cartridge. The chromatograms were analyzed by chemometrics and machine learning techniques.

Conditions

• Lung Cancer

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	Portable GC device for brath analysis	Patients were asked to orally exhale 1-2 L breath into a 5 L Tedlar bag via a one-way mouthpiece and Nafion filter for moisture removal, as shown in Figure 1B. The process usually takes about a few minutes. The breath analysis took place either in-situ immediately after the breath sample collection or within 24 h of breath collection. The Tedlar bags were stored under ambient condition until analyzed. During the breath analysis, the Tedlar bag was connected to the sampling port of the portable GC (Figure 1C). Approximately 350 mL of breath was pulled from the Tedlar bag into the GC for analysis. The GC operation was controlled using LabView via a laptop. The total assay time was 30 min, including 5 min of breath sampling time from the Tedlar bag at a flow rate of 70 mL/min (see the blue path in Figure 1A), 5 min of desorption/transfer time, 10 min of chromatographic separation time (see the orange path in Figure 1A), and 10 min of GC system cleaning time.

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-04-01
• Primary completion: 2022-09-01
• Completion: 2023-08-01
• First posted: 2023-09-13
• Last updated: 2023-09-13

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Italy