Ants Detect Cancer Tumors Through Smelling Patients' Urine

In an announcement of a new study, it was revealed that ants can detect cancer tumors by smelling a patient's urine through their strong olfactory receptors. These insects could be used as a much cheaper alternative to identify several types of cancer.

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Panamanian researcher Dumas Galvez handles ants at the bathroom of his house in Panama City, on May 12, 2020. - 38-year-old researcher Dumas Galvez, a Smithsonian post-doctorate laureate, had to take all his research material, including thousands of ants, to the bathroom of his house due to the mobility restrictions imposed amid the new coronavirus pandemic. Dumas researches on behavior changes and analyzes how different fungae affect ants.

Smelling Cancer

Formica Fusca ants would be able to detect cancer tumors by just smelling patients' urine, despite not having noses. Based on a report from Interesting Engineering, ants have strong olfactory receptors, which is the reason why they have these capabilities.

Sorbonne Paris North University Ethologist Baptiste Piqueret led the study along with his team. They began by xenografting human breast cancer tumors through mice and allowed this to develop. This is followed by taking urine samples from both healthy and tumor-ridden animals.

The new study was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Formica Fusca

The study taught the researchers by linking the scent of tumors to ants and rewarding the insects by dabbing a drop of sugar water in front of the urine from cancered mice, which is where the flies gathered for 20 percent longer than the healthy mice.

The Independent reported that 70 ants were exposed for the current study. These were known as Formica Fusca. This was established for three training sessions, totaling up to 10 minutes.

Compared to training canines which usually takes up to six months or longer, this process is a lot quicker. Ants were also trained with associative learning to associate a given odor after a few trials.

He described this process as similar to real-life situations rather than using traditional and culture cancer cells. Even the researchers were also surprised by how this process is very efficient and reliable.

Meanwhile, co-author of the Study Patrizia d'Ettore stated that ants can also be used to discriminate healthy individuals from tumors as they are great as bio detectors. She added, "They are easy to train, learn fast, are very efficient, and are not expensive to keep."

While this study excites a lot of researchers, especially since cancer is responsible for around one in sex deaths, Piqueret clarified that this study is only a proof of concept and far from any kind of clinical application.

This research tested the process with mice as subjects. Comparing it to real-life situations and introducing this concept to many classifications such as age, sex, and diet, the result may be affected. Additionally, Scientific American reported that the tumors that were used are proportionally large for mice.

For the next study of the researchers, they will be investigating the process of a small tumor until it goes undetected as they level up the study using urine from humans with particular cancers.