MSU researchers use honeybees to detect lung cancer

EAST LANSING, Mich. (WILX) – The buzz around the Michigan State University Campus, researchers have made a unique discovery using honeybees.

The honey-making insects can detect lung cancer in human breath. The MSU research project looks to open the door for more smell-based disease detection.

Researchers at Michigan State University are attempting to improve early methods of cancer diagnosis. Using the most common pollinator to detect lung cancer in human breath.

“Bees have an amazing sense of smell just like dogs,” said professor Debajit Saha of MSU’s Institute for Quantitative Health Science and Engineering or IQ headed the 3-year project.

Using specially designed harnesses, five student researchers and their lab manager performed small brain surgeries on the honeybees.

“We take these cancer-causing chemicals, or the cancer cell culture volatiles and we deliver them on their antenna which is similar to our nose,” Saha.

“It was really interesting. It’s not insanely difficult but it did require a steady hand in order to cut into them,” said Summer McLane-Svoboda, one of the graduate students on the project.

Svoboda says the brain surgery helped them study the bees’ reaction to the breath chemicals.

“They can actually differentiate between not only cancer and healthy cells but also the subtypes of lung cancer. So non-small cell and small cell,” said Svoboda.

The next step is testing on humans both healthy and those with cancer. Along with creating a device that you simply breathe into and get a cancer diagnosis if it’s detected.

“Early detection can completely change the treatment regime that a patient is exposed to,” said Saha.

“Because you can treat it earlier on and it’s less aggressive than a later stage would be,” said Svoboda. Giving more people a chance at beating cancer.

According to the American Cancer Society, Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in both men and women in the United States. Most people diagnosed with lung cancer are 65 or older with the average age of diagnosis 70-years-old.

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