Exhaled volatile organic compounds as noninvasive markers in breast cancer

Abstract

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath are interesting candidates as breast cancer (BC) markers for malignancy, staging, histology, genotype, and distinction from other malignant and benign diseases. VOC BC markers can be derived either as BC-specific compounds by analytical chemistry or as collective breath prints by statistical treatment of the output of sensor arrays. Despite the great potential of applications in clinical diagnostics, only few studies for breath VOC BC markers have been done, and breath testing for BC has not yet left the realm of research and entered clinical practice, mainly due to lack of standardization of the experimental techniques. In this chapter, we will outline the vast potential of exhaled VOC as a novel class of molecular BC markers and describe the challenges on the way from bench to bedside. In this chapter, we provide a didactic approach to the state-of-the-art experimental techniques for breath collection, sample storage, analysis of the breath VOCs, and direct breath printing, and we present examples for applications of diagnosing BC by VOC profiling.