Caenorhabditis elegans Exhibits Selective Chemotaxis to Cancer Cell-Conditioned Media

Caenorhabditis elegans is emerging as a valuable model for investigating chemosensory responses to disease-associated molecular cues recently. In this study, we examined the chemotaxis behavior of C. elegans toward the conditioned media from cancerous MIA PaCa-2 and PANC-1 cells and non-cancerous PNT1A cells. Untrained wild-type worms exhibited orientation to PNT1A media compared to the controls. Most importantly, training with cancer-conditioned media led to altered chemotaxis behavior, indicating olfactory learning. These findings support the use of C. elegans as a sensitive and adaptable system for detecting cancer-associated metabolites and demonstrate its potential role in non-invasive cancer screening applications and training-based models.