Photo/Illutration Eelworms used for cancer checks (Provided by Hirotsu Bio Science Inc.)

Researchers have discovered that eelworms can help detect early signs of pancreatic cancer from urine samples, which they believe could lead to a new testing method for early diagnosis of the deadly disease.  

A team of researchers, including Hideshi Ishii, a specially appointed professor at Osaka University, announced the results of their study at a news conference on Sept. 6. 

Some 30,000 people in Japan die from pancreatic cancer annually, making it the fourth leading cause of death among cancer patients. In many cases, the cancer is too advanced to be treated when it is detected, due to difficulty conducting tests on the pancreas and few subjective symptoms.

Eelworms, which look like eels under a microscope, measure about 1 millimeter in length and have an exceptional sense of smell.

Another group of researchers from Kyushu University and other institutions in 2015 discovered that eelworms are attracted to the smell of urine from cancer patients, paving the way for a possible development of tests to detect cancer with high accuracy.

A team led by Ishii conducted experiments to see if eelworms can also detect the odor of urine from patients at an early stage of pancreatic cancer.

The researchers used urine samples collected from 83 pancreatic cancer patients registered at multiple hospitals in Japan between 2015 and 2019. They placed 50 to 100 eelworms in the middle of a plate and added a few drops of human urine off to the side. 

The team found that eelworms tend to crawl closer to urine samples taken from 25 patients whose cancer tissues measure less than 2 centimeters and 58 others who have larger cancer tissues before their cancer was removed.

But the eelworms were more likely to wriggle away from the patients’ urine samples collected after the removal of their cancer.

The researchers also tested how eelworms react to urine samples taken from 11 patients with early-stage pancreatic cancer and 17 healthy people.

Although some eelworms were not drawn to urine samples from cancer patients, the results showed a clear tendency of the eelworms to distance themselves from urine samples from healthy individuals.

The researchers concluded that eelworms are highly likely to help detect pancreatic cancer at an early stage.

The team is also studying developing a method to detect each type of cancer by using genetically engineered eelworms.

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