Scientists develop ‘zombie cell’ urine test that could spot common cancer before symptoms appear

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have found that a urine test built to catch early signs of lung cancer might have a second use nobody was expecting: flagging pulmonary fibrosis, a lung-scarring disease that's notoriously hard to diagnose in its early stages.

According to the University of Cambridge, the tool, a nanoprobe called ALBANC, was originally engineered to track 'senescence-associated activity, biological chatter given off by so-called 'zombie cells,' which stop dividing but stay chemically active and are linked to both cancer and a host of age-related diseases.

New findings, published in Nature Aging, show the same signal shows up in experimental models of pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive and often irreversible condition where catching it early can make all the difference.

The discovery is a bonus on top of the tool's original purpose: monitoring how lung cancer patients are responding to treatment, and whether their disease is coming back.

The nanoprobe, named ALBANC, was developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge's BioNano Engineering research group. (Getty stock image)

How does the Cambridge urine test for lung cancer work?

ALBANC works by combining a human protein with tiny gold clusters, held together by a peptide link that's built to break apart when it meets a specific enzyme called MMP-7.

That enzyme turns out to be the common thread tying this whole story together, researchers identified it as the key marker of senescence-linked activity in both lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis.

When MMP-7 activity is high in diseased tissue, the link snaps, and the released fragments are small enough for the kidneys to filter straight into urine, where they produce a color change that can be measured.

To make that signal easier to pick up, the team built an amplification step that boosts detection roughly 250-fold compared to standard methods, according to the university, making it sensitive enough for repeated testing over time without needing a biopsy or scan.

Professor Ljiljana Fruk, of Cambridge's BioNano Engineering research group, said the appeal of the approach is turning something invisible into something you can actually measure.

“This approach allows us to follow senescence-associated activity in a way that is non-invasive and repeatable,” she said, adding that the pulmonary fibrosis link was a welcome surprise: “The fact that it may also be relevant to other conditions we did not originally set out to study makes the direction of research particularly encouraging.”

(Getty stock image)

Could this urine test replace biopsies for lung disease?

It's not there yet, and researchers are careful to note that ALBANC doesn't detect cancer directly.

Instead, it's designed to work alongside existing diagnostics, giving doctors a way to keep tabs on disease activity between scans.

Professor Daniel Muñoz-Espín, of Cambridge's Early Cancer Institute, said the pulmonary fibrosis findings matter because so few tools exist for catching the disease before it takes hold.

“A non-invasive way to track disease-related biology over time could be valuable in patients at higher risk, including those with underlying lung conditions, environmental exposures or other known risk factors,” he said.

Professor Robert Rintoul, co-lead for the CRUK Cambridge Centre Thoracic Cancer Programme, said the research is now moving toward trials with real patients: "This work forms the basis for testing within clinical trials with a view to future use in the clinic."

The study builds on the same team's earlier research this year into how chemotherapy can trigger 'zombie cells' that help tumors resist treatment and return.

The next step is figuring out how reliably ALBANC performs in humans, and whether it could eventually help doctors track both cancer treatment response and fibrotic lung disease from a single urine sample.