Ants detect cancer cells through volatile organic compounds
Baptiste Piqueret,
Brigitte Bourachot,
Chloé Leroy,
Paul Devienne,
Fatima Mechta-Grigoriou,
Patrizia d’Ettorre,
Jean-Christophe Sandoz
Affiliations
Baptiste Piqueret
Laboratoire d'Ethologie Expérimentale et Comparée UR 4443 (LEEC), Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, 93430 Villetaneuse, France; Corresponding author
Brigitte Bourachot
Stress and Cancer Laboratory, Institut Curie, PSL Research University, Equipe labelisée Ligue Nationale Contre le Cancer, 26, rue d’Ulm, 75248 Paris Cedex 05, France; Inserm, U830, Paris F-75248, France
Chloé Leroy
Laboratoire d'Ethologie Expérimentale et Comparée UR 4443 (LEEC), Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, 93430 Villetaneuse, France
Paul Devienne
Laboratoire d'Ethologie Expérimentale et Comparée UR 4443 (LEEC), Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, 93430 Villetaneuse, France
Fatima Mechta-Grigoriou
Stress and Cancer Laboratory, Institut Curie, PSL Research University, Equipe labelisée Ligue Nationale Contre le Cancer, 26, rue d’Ulm, 75248 Paris Cedex 05, France; Inserm, U830, Paris F-75248, France
Patrizia d’Ettorre
Laboratoire d'Ethologie Expérimentale et Comparée UR 4443 (LEEC), Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, 93430 Villetaneuse, France; Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Paris, France; Corresponding author
Summary: Cancer is among the world’s leading causes of death. A critical challenge for public health is to develop a noninvasive, inexpensive, and efficient tool for early cancer detection. Cancer cells are characterized by an altered metabolism, producing unique patterns of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can be used as cancer biomarkers. Dogs can detect VOCs via olfactory associative learning, but training dogs is costly and time-consuming. Insects, such as ants, have a refined sense of smell and can be rapidly trained. We show that individual ants need only a few training trials to learn, memorize, and reliably detect the odor of human cancer cells. These performances rely on specific VOC patterns, as shown by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. Our findings suggest that using ants as living tools to detect biomarkers of human cancer is feasible, fast, and less laborious than using other animals.
