By: Eric Tian

Have you ever thought about how you can find out if you have cancer? What if I told you that there is a way? People have found a way and they can use worms–yes those slimy long bugs.

These worms can smell lung cancer cells and scientists are using that to create “worm on a chip device to discover to know who has lung cancer and who does not.”

The common roundworm is the worm that can detect who has cancer and who does not, but how? The worms can fit in a chip since the device is so small. The device has three huge indents. There would be fifty worms. A healthy human cell would be at one end while the lung cancer cell would be at the other. The worms would be in the middle. They can sniff the cells at either end. The worms tended to wriggle toward the end containing diseased cells. About 70 percent of the worms move toward cancer.

Some people, including Paul Bunn who’s a researcher at the University of Colorado, reported that dogs can do the same thing.

These worms have such a good sense of smell. Even though they cannot see or hear, their smell is as strong as a dog or a mouse, stated Viola Folli who studies neuroscience at the Sapienza University of Rome in Italy.

If this idea works, then these worms can be the future of helping people from lung cancer.