Four - legged diagnosticians

A new study has shown that dogs have an average accuracy of 96.7% in detecting lung cancer samples

Dmitry Mazalev, Naked Science

The smell receptors of a dog are 10 thousand times more accurate than ours. This is useful in detecting cancer: in a new study, animals took blood samples from cancer patients by smell with an accuracy of almost 97%, and in 97.5% of cases, healthy samples were detected.

Researchers around the world are experimenting with ways to use artificial intelligence and other high-tech tools to detect cancer in the human body. Meanwhile, the startup BioScentDx, based in Florida (USA), approaches this issue from a fundamentally different angle: experts decided to use the abilities of dogs to detect cancer, and, according to company representatives, animals are surprisingly good at this.

Representatives of BioScentDx announced their research on cancer detection using dogs at a meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, during a meeting of the experimental biology section. In the work, scientists used a behavioral technique called clicker training to teach beagle dogs to distinguish between healthy blood samples and samples taken from people with a malignant lung tumor. According to the press release, four dogs initially participated in the work, but one of them – named Snaggle – was "unmotivated." Despite this, the remaining three had an average accuracy of 96.7% in detecting lung cancer samples and 97.5% in determining healthy samples.

According to one of the authors of the study, Heather Junqueira, there are two possible methods in which scientists can use this ability of dogs to detect oncological diseases.

"One of the methods involves using this ability of dogs as a cancer screening method, and in another case it becomes possible to identify biological compounds that dogs detect and then develop cancer screening tests based on these compounds. And although doctors do not have a cure for cancer now, early detection of the disease gives a great chance of survival. Developed on the basis of our research, a highly sensitive test can save thousands of lives and change the way the disease is treated," the scientist claims in a press release.

BioScentDx employees plan to use the open ability of dogs to develop a non-invasive screening method for cancer and other life-threatening diseases. As a next step, the company has launched a breast cancer study in which participants donate samples of their breath for screening by specially trained dogs. The researchers also plan to separate the samples into their chemical components and present them to dogs in order to isolate the substances that cause the very smell that the animals detect.

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