“Insects have an amazing sense of smell the same way dogs do,” said Debajit Saha, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering and MSU’s Institute for Quantitative Health Science and Engineering.
Saha and his team developed tools to measure changes in a honeybee’s brain signals when exposed to different compound mixtures synthesized to match the breath of someone with lung cancer and another to match healthy human breath.
“What’s amazing is the honeybees’ ability to not only detect cancer cells, but also distinguish between cell lines of various types of lung cancer,” said Autumn McLane-Svoboda, a graduate student on the team. “The future implications for this are huge as our sensor could allow for patients to receive specific cancer diagnoses quickly which is imperative for correct treatment routes.”
