New insight into the omic sciences suggests that volatile organic compounds (VOCs) contained in exhaled breath can reflect the healthy or disease state of patients, representing an attractive, promising and non-invasive method of medical investigation. This approach has recently been proposed as a new potential screening tool in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. However, a possible correlation between the exhaled VOCs and those produced by the cancerous tissue has never been investigated. In this preliminary study, we compare the VOCs exhaled by seven patients affected by CRC with those produce by own cancer tissue and normal colonic mucosa. The VOCs contained in the exhaled breath were sampled with the ReCIVA breath sampler©, while those produced by ex-vivo human tissues weresampled by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) at different incubation times after surgery. In both cases, the collected VOCs were analyzed by Gas Chromatography with Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). Benzaldehyde, benzene ethyl, benzene methyl, butanoic acid, dodecanoic acid, indole, nonanal, octanoic acid, pentanoic acid, phenol and tetradecane were the VOCs most frequently detected both in the exhaled breath and secreted by tissues. The results showed that cancer tissue and normal colonic mucosa from the same patient produced a similar VOCs pattern but with different fingerprints. In particular, the concentrations of benzaldehyde, benzene ethyl and indole were significantly different in cancer tissue respect the normal colonic mucosa. In conclusion, these preliminary data suggest the involvement of the three compounds in CRC by encouraging further investigation.

中文翻译：

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结直肠癌患者的癌组织来源与呼出的挥发性有机化合物之间的关系。初步结果。

对眼科学的新见解表明，呼气中所含的挥发性有机化合物（VOC）可以反映患者的健康或疾病状态，代表了一种有吸引力的，有前途的，无创的医学研究方法。最近，已提出将该方法作为结直肠癌（CRC）患者的一种新的潜在筛查工具。但是，从未研究呼出的VOC与癌组织产生的VOC之间的可能相关性。在这项初步研究中，我们比较了7名受CRC影响的患者呼出的VOC与自身癌组织和正常结肠粘膜产生的VOC。用ReCIVA呼吸采样器©对呼出气中所含的VOC进行采样，而由离体人体组织产生的那些样品则在手术后的不同孵育时间通过顶空固相微萃取（HS-SPME）进行采样。在这两种情况下，都通过气相色谱-质谱联用仪（GC-MS）对收集的VOC进行了分析。苯甲醛，苯乙基，苯甲基，丁酸，十二烷酸，吲哚，壬醛，辛酸，戊酸，苯酚和十四烷是在呼出气和组织分泌物中最常见的挥发性有机化合物。结果表明，同一患者的癌组织和正常结肠粘膜产生了相似的VOCs模式，但指纹不同。特别地，相对于正常结肠粘膜，在癌组织中苯甲醛，苯乙基和吲哚的浓度显着不同。综上所述，