Laboratório de Métodos de Extração E Separação (LAMES), Instituto de Química (IQ), Universidade Federal de Goiás (UFG), Campus II - Samambaia, Goiânia, GO, 74690-900, Brazil.
Metabolomics. 2024 Oct 7;20(5):113. doi: 10.1007/s11306-024-02180-5.
Cancer is a significant public health problem, causing dozens of millions of deaths annually. New cancer screening programs are urgently needed for early cancer detection, as this approach can improve treatment outcomes and increase patient survival. The search for affordable, noninvasive, and highly accurate cancer detection methods revealed a valuable source of tumor-derived metabolites in the human metabolome through the exploration of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in noninvasive biofluids.
This review discusses volatilomics-based approaches for cancer detection using noninvasive biomatrices (breath, saliva, skin secretions, urine, feces, and earwax). We presented the historical background, the latest approaches, and the required stages for clinical validation of volatilomics-based methods, which are still lacking in terms of making noninvasive methods available and widespread to the population. Furthermore, insights into the usefulness and challenges of volatilomics in clinical implementation steps for each biofluid are highlighted.
We outline the methodologies for using noninvasive biomatrices with up-and-coming clinical applications in cancer diagnostics. Several challenges and advantages associated with the use of each biomatrix are discussed, aiming at encouraging the scientific community to strengthen efforts toward the necessary steps to speed up the clinical translation of volatile-based cancer detection methods, as well as discussing in favor of (i) hybrid applications (i.e., using more than one biomatrix) to describe metabolite modulations that can be "cancer volatile fingerprints" and (ii) in multi-omics approaches integrating genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics into the volatilomic data, which might be a breakthrough for diagnostic purposes, onco-pathway assessment, and biomarker validations.
癌症是一个重大的公共卫生问题，每年导致数千万人死亡。由于早期癌症检测可以改善治疗效果并提高患者生存率，因此迫切需要新的癌症筛查计划。通过探索非侵入性生物体液中的挥发性有机化合物（VOCs），在人类代谢组中发现了肿瘤衍生代谢物的宝贵来源，从而为寻找经济实惠、非侵入性和高度准确的癌症检测方法提供了线索。
本文讨论了使用非侵入性生物基质（呼吸、唾液、皮肤分泌物、尿液、粪便和耳垢）进行基于挥发组学的癌症检测方法。我们介绍了基于挥发组学的方法的历史背景、最新进展以及临床验证所需的阶段，这些方法在将非侵入性方法普及到人群方面仍然存在不足。此外，还强调了挥发组学在每个生物体液的临床实施步骤中的有用性和挑战。
我们概述了使用非侵入性生物基质的方法，这些方法具有即将在癌症诊断中应用的临床应用。讨论了使用每种生物基质的相关挑战和优势，旨在鼓励科学界加强努力，为加快基于挥发性的癌症检测方法的临床转化而采取必要的步骤，并提倡（i）混合应用（即使用多种生物基质）来描述可能是“癌症挥发性指纹”的代谢物调制，以及（ii）在多组学方法中整合基因组学、转录组学和蛋白质组学到挥发组学数据中，这可能是诊断目的、肿瘤途径评估和生物标志物验证的突破。
