Emory University's Winship Cancer Institute, Atlanta, Georgia

— -- My name is Sheryl Gabram and I'm an Emory principal investigator on a project called breath analysis as a method for disease detection, specifically breast cancer detection.

This is a collaborative project with Georgia Tech and what we are looking at is volatile compounds that are emitted from the breath that have been shown to be present in patients with breast cancer compared to normal volunteers. So we're comparing two groups of patients in this pilot study to analyze those breath compounds.

Future work will include the role of possibly using this modality for screening for patients who do not have immediate access to mammography as well as interval screening for patients at high risk for breast cancer in between mammography and other screening modalities as well as for patients who've been diagnosed and treated with breast cancer to follow them for potential disease recurrence or disease progression.