You’ve probably heard of some dogs that have been trained to sniff out cancer in humans. But what about the ants doing the same job? A team of scientists discovered that ants can use their keen sense of smell to detect cancer cells.
Detect cancer quickly? Ants are already a reality
The team used Formica fusca ants, also known as silky antsand trained them through a reward system.
“After a few minutes of training, these insects, which use their sense of smell for daily tasks. They were able to differentiate healthy human cells from human cancer cells.” This was said on Wednesday by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in a statement.
Researchers have been exploring ways to detect cancer quickly and efficiently without resorting to expensive or invasive methods.
“Our findings suggest that using ants as living tools to detect human cancer biomarkers is feasible, quick, and less labor intensive than using other animals.” the researchers said in a article published in iScience last month.
Training the ants involved associating the reward of a sugar solution with the scent the researchers wanted them to detect. The team tested the ants’ memory with tests in which there was no reward. The trained ants they spent time near the odor to which they were conditioned to respond. The insects were also able to differentiate between two cell lines of different cancer.
The efficacy of this method now needs to be evaluated in clinical trials.
Dogs are good at sniffing out cancer, but the training process is time consuming. The CNRS said:
“The efficacy of this method now needs to be evaluated by clinical trials in a human, but this first study shows that the ants have high potential, are able to learn very quickly, at lower cost and are efficient.”
The researchers see a potential for ants also detect other odors, such as narcotics, explosives or other diseases. They’re not as cuddly as dogs, but their olfactory superpowers are just as sharp.
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