A recent research has revealed that a person’s breath could show the existence of cancer. Cancer Research UK started a two-year trial on a clinical device called the Breath Biopsy, to figure out if molecules called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can be helpful for cancer detection. This test needs 1,500 participants including healthy people to act as a control group. Participants will breathe into the device for 10 minutes to collect a sample, which will later be examined in Owlstone Medical’s laboratory in Cambridge.

VOCs are produced in the human body’s usual metabolic processes and it’s believed that cancer can generate a different order of VOCs. Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald, lead trial researcher at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Center said in a statement, “We urgently need to develop new tools, like this breath test, which could help to detect and diagnose cancer earlier, giving patients the best chance of surviving their disease.” According to Cancer Research UK, over 360,000 new cancer cases are there in UK every year. World Health Organization stated that an estimated 18.1 million new cases of cancer were reported in 2018 worldwide.