Chen X, Muhammad KG, Madeeha C, et al. - For lung cancer screening and early detection, this study sought to assess the efficacy of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhalation. Researchers examined the exhaled breath samples through thermal desorption coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to collect the metabolic information from volatile organic compounds (VOCs); samples came from 352 participants, including 160 who had lung cancer (LC), 70 with a benign pulmonary nodule, and 122 healthy controls (HC). They applied statistical classification models to find diagnostic clusters of VOCs for discerning HC, benign pulmonary nodule (BPN), and LC patients’ early and advanced stages, as well as subtypes of LC. The accuracy of these models was assessed by applying receiver operator characteristics (ROC) curves with 5-fold validations. The results of this study exhibited that the volatome of breath of the LC patients significantly differed from that of BPN patients and HC and exhibited an ability to distinguish early from advanced stage LC and NSCLC from SCLC. The data demonstrated that the volatome has the potential to help improve the early diagnosis of LC. The analysis revealed that 20, 19, 19, and 20 VOCs discriminated LC from HC, LC from BPN, histology and LC stages respectively.