E-Mail PHILADELPHIA--An odor-based test that sniffs out vapors emanating from blood samples was able to distinguish between benign and pancreatic and ovarian cancer cells with up to 95 percent accuracy, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Penn's Perelman School of Medicine. The findings suggest that the Penn-developed tool -- which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to decipher the mixture of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitting off cells in blood plasma samples -- could serve as a non-invasive approach to screen for harder-to-detect cancers, such as pancreatic and ovarian. The results will be presented at the annual