Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa created a silicon-gold circuit by embedding gold nanoparticles in a silicon wafer. They then had 40 cancer patients and 56 people with healthy lungs fill mylar bags with healthy air, and had the air blown over the silicon-gold circuits.

Tumorous growths tear certain chemicals out of tissue, so that air in cancer-affected lungs contains molecules that healthy lungs do not. The research team chose to track four such chemicals: decane, trimethylbenzene, ethylbenzene, and heptanol. When the chemicals bind to the organic coat on the nanowires, they change the circuit's electrical resistance in a predictable way.

With some tweaking, the team hopes that the device will prove a reliable test for lung cancer, and, since the the circuits can be reused, it would be a relatively inexpensive, not to mention portable, method of detection. But aside from its convenience, breath testing could have another thing up on existing methods of lung cancer diagnosis: it could detect cancer too small to show up on an X-ray or CT scan, meaning it might detect lung cancer at a much earlier stage.

A Breathalyzer for Cancer [ScienceNOW]

South Korean scientist Myung-Haing Cho modified a lentivirus, a genus in the Retroviridae family which includes most mammal immunodeficiency viruses, to deliver to lung-cancer tumors a gene, which inhibits cancer cells from reproducing in mice's lungs. Their method of choice? A nasal spray.

They had various cancer-ridden mice sniff the modified lentivirus twice a week for a month, and they found that the modified virus completely halted the progression of the lung cancer without harm to the non-cancerous tissue. In some cases, existing cancer cells even died off without further therapy.

Scientists consider modified lentiviruses ideal for cancer therapy (in addition to other gene therapies) because it affects even non-replicating cells (like neurons) and can create long term changes, positive changes in genes.

Of course, anybody who's seen I Am Legend knows that the "genetically engineered virus that fights cancer" thing can only end one way.

Science Fiction? Aerosol Delivery Of An Engineered Virus Halts Lung Cancer Progression In Mice [Pittsburgh Examiner]

[Image via Encyclopedia of Life]