BIONOTE e-nose technology may reduce false positives in lung cancer screening programmes

OBJECTIVES: Breath composition may be suggestive of different conditions. E-nose technology has been used to profile volatile organiccompounds (VOCs) pattern in the breath of patients compared with that of healthy individuals. BIOsensor-based multisensorial system formimicking NOse, Tongue and Eyes (BIONOTE) technology differs from Cyranose® based on a set of separate transduction features. On thebasis of our previously published experience, we investigated the discriminating ability of BIONOTE in a high-risk population enrolled in alung cancer screening programme.METHODS: One hundred individuals were selected for BIONOTE based on the attribution to the high-risk category (i.e. age, smokingstatus, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease status) of the University Campus Bio-Medico lung screening programme. We used ameasure chain consisting of (i) a device named Pneumopipe (EU patent: EP2641537 (A1):2013-09-25) able to catch exhaled breath by anindividual normally breathing into it and collect the exhalate onto an adsorbing cartridge; (ii) an apparatus for thermal desorption of thecartridge into the sensors chamber and (iii) a gas sensor array which is part of a sensorial platform named BIONOTE for the VOCs mixtureanalysis. Partial least square (PLS) has been used to build up the model, with Leave-One-Out cross-validation criterion. Each breath fingerprintanalysis costs €10.RESULTS: The overall sensitivity and specificity were 86 and 95%, respectively, delineating a substantial difference between patients andhealthy individuals.CONCLUSIONS: Our preliminary data show that BIONOTE technology may be used to reduce false-positive rates resulting from lungcancer screening with low-dose computed tomography in a cost-effective fashion. The model will be tested on a larger number of patientsto confirm the reliability of these results.