One in two people will get cancer in their lifetimes.

Globally, lung cancer is the most common cancer in the world with over 2 million diagnoses estimated in 2020. If detected early, the chance of surviving cancer is ten times higher, and the cost of treatment is ten times lower than in the later stages. Therefore, developing new early cancer detection methods is the best way to improve cancer survival.

Our breath test developed to enable lung cancer early detection is currently being tested in a phase 2 clinical trial and involves the use of an Exogenous Volatile Organic Compound (EVOC®) Probe administered from outside the body to target specific cancer pathways. Our work suggests that almost 90% of Stage I lung cancers can be targeted, with the potential to have a transformative effect on lung cancer detection.

Breath offers a unique roster of potential biomarkers arising from metabolic pathways in the body that may be disrupted in cancer, that can be collected completely non-invasively. This makes breath an advantageous biomarker matrix to study in comparison to more expensive, more invasively acquired samples such as tissue biopsies that are difficult to tolerate.