Volatile organic compound signatures in breast cancer: A pilot study on cell-based detection

Triple-negative breast cancer is an aggressive subtype lacking hormone receptors and HER2, which limits therapeutic options and complicates early diagnosis. This pilot study aimed to evaluate the potential of electronic noses as a non-invasive tool for detecting TNBC by analyzing volatile organic compounds emitted by cell cultures. A total of 32 samples (22 TNBC MDA-MB-231 and 10 non-tumor controls) were analyzed using a MOX sensor-based electronic nose. Chemometric analyses including PCA, PLS-DA, and Random Forest were applied, with leave-one-out cross-validation and permutation testing to assess model robustness. PCA showed that the first two components explained 92.2 % of the variance and clearly separated TNBC from healthy samples. PLS-DA achieved 95 % classification accuracy (R² = 0.81, Q² = 0.76), and Random Forest validation confirmed high predictive performance. These findings highlight the ability of electronic noses to discriminate between tumor and non-tumor volatile profiles, supporting their use as a complementary tool for the early diagnosis of aggressive breast cancers.