Cerumenogram: A new frontier in cancer diagnosis in humans

• Cancer is the deadliest human disease and the development of new diagnosis methods is important to increase the chances of a cure.

• In this work, a new method was developed, named here for the first time as cerumenogram, that uses cerumen (earwax) as a new biomatrix for diagnosis.

• Earwax samples collected from cancer patients (cancer group) and cancer-free patients (control group) were analyzed by Headspace/Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (HS/GC-MS), followed by multivariate analysis steps to process the raw data generated.

• In total, 158 volatile organic metabolites (VOMs) were identified in the cerumen samples.

• The 27 selected as potential VOMs biomarkers for cancer provided 100% discrimination between cancer and control groups.

• This new test can thus be routinely employed for cancer diagnoses that are non-invasive, fast, cheap, and highly accurate.

Published: 13 August 2019

source:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-48121-4

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48121-4