What if ants could be at the origin of the diagnoses of certain cancers? A team of French researchers from the CNRS, Inserm, Sorbonne Paris-Nord University and the Curie Institute conducted an unprecedented experiment on a hundred ants. And the results, published on February 22 in the journal iScienceare quite impressive: if a trained ant is dropped on a table, it will be able in 95% of cases head for the smell of diseased cells.
They have been trained to spot three cancer cell lines : ovarian cancer cells and two types of breast cancer cells. “There’s no reason to think it won’t work for other types of cancer cells“, explains Baptiste Piqueret, one of the researchers.
“Three one-hour workouts were enough”
Recent experiments have shown the dog performanceto spot the smell of certain cancerous tumors, including sweat odors in cases of certain breast cancers, which a human cannot smell.
However, this learning technique is time-consuming – between six months and a year – and costly, either “tens of thousands of euros“, continues Baptiste Piqueret. This is why the researchers tried the experiment with ants, an insect using its sense of smell in its daily tasks and endowed with a quick learning ability.
“Three one-hour training sessions were enough for them to learn“, welcomes the researcher. The protocol is also very simple and “does not require expensive equipment – as proof, I did the manipulations in my apartment during the spring 2020 confinement“, laughs the researcher.
It now only remains to see if the method can be effective on a “complete human organism“.
Sources:
- Cancer sniffing miceCNRS, March 9, 2022
- Ants detect cancer cells through volatile organic compounds, iScience, February 2022
Read also:
- Eating less meat reduces the risk of all cancers
- Soon a single screening for 4 female cancers?
- Triple negative breast cancer: a cancer still too little known
