Detection of VOCs in exhaled breath for lung cancer diagnosis

Lung cancer is the most common cancer and the leading cause of cancer death, bringing a large burden to the society. Early detection and treatment are crucial to improve the survival rate of lung cancer patients. The current available clinic techniques for lung cancer diagnosis and classification are inevitably invasive, costly, over-diagnosed or incapable of early diagnosis. In this context, analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath, which has the potential to provide a cheaper, point-of-care, and non-invasive diagnosis of lung cancer, has been developed as a research hotspot in recent decades. However, there's still no VOCs-in-exhaled-breath test for detecting lung cancer in clinic. There are many obstructions for developing VOCs tests, which include the lack of recognized VOCs biomarkers for lung cancer and limited knowledge about the origin of the identified VOCs. Even so, there are numerous studies on VOCs and lung cancer, providing guidance to establish VOCs analytical platforms with diagnostic potential. Reviewing relevant studies, combined with bibliometric analysis based on studies from January 1st, 2019 to August 10th, 2023, this manuscript provides an overview of the approaches that have been used for the purpose of diagnosing lung cancer by VOCs-in-exhaled-breath tests.