Case CCC Population and Cancer Prevention Program member, Mohamed Draz, PhD, provided background information for a study published this week in MDLinx that indicates honey bees can detect certain cancers with nearly 90% accuracy.
Draz explains, “Cancer metabolism produces specific compounds that are exhaled in the breath.” And, while the title of this article insinuates that a bee smells cancer (which they indeed can), the aim of the study was to record how neurons in bee brains respond to different cancer and non-cancer odors.
According to Draz, the researchers exposed the bees to the mixtures and measured neuronal responses from the honey bees’ antennal lobes. They found that the bees, known for their sharp sense of smell, had an 88% success rate at detecting the synthetic breath that contained cancer cells and differentiating between different types of cancer (in this case, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC)).
“Bees can potentially detect these differences in VOCs, identifying patterns or specific markers that indicate the presence of cancer,” Draz said.
Identifying cancer in earlier stages improves health outcomes and saves lives. Using bees to do this just might be the answer, according to Draz and others studying this phenomenon.