“We’re trying to mimic the mammalian sense of smell artificially. We’ve now developed an algorithm that can distinguish ovarian cancer from endometrial cancer and healthy control groups, using data from an electronic nose,” says Donatella Puglisi, associate professor at Linköping University, Sweden.

In ovarian cancer, symptoms are often vague and similar to those of other more common diseases. This type of cancer is therefore detected at a late stage of development, when survival outcomes are poor. Earlier discovery would increase chances of timely medical care. In 2022, some 325,000 new cases of ovarian cancer and more than 200,000 deaths were reported globally. Moreover, the World Cancer Research Fund estimates that these figures will have increased drastically by 2050.