Efficiency of gastrointestinal cancer detection by nematode-NOSE (N-NOSE)

Abstract

Background/Aim: Early detection of gastrointestinal cancer may reduce mortality. Recently, Caenorhabditis elegans has been reported to be capable of differentiating patients with cancers from healthy persons by the smell of urine. This novel technique using C. elegans olfaction has been named as Nematode-NOSE (N-NOSE). Materials and Methods: We collected 180 urine samples from patients with gastrointestinal cancer and 76 samples from healthy subjects. N-NOSE test was performed using these samples and N-NOSE index was obtained. Quantification of the olfactory behavior of C. elegans was performed as established in past studies. By receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, we examined the diagnostic capability of N-NOSE. Results: ROC analysis revealed that N-NOSE showed an area under the curve value of more than 0.80, even in early-stage cancers. Conclusion: C. elegans olfaction enabled the detection of gastrointestinal cancers from urine with high sensitivity, which can provide the basis for the development of N-NOSE as a gastrointestinal cancer screening test.