LONDON: If Barbara Sommerville, a vet at the University of Cambridge, in England, is funded to test the idea, we will soon find out how dogs can sniff out human cancers.

Although Lassie never saved the day by excitedly leading doctors to a hidden melanoma, stories of cancer-spotting dogs abound. The first involves a border collie-dobermann cross that in 1989 evidently sniffed out a cancerous mole on a woman’s leg. Then, in 1997, George, an explosives-sniffing schnauzer was trained to sniff out skin cancers.

Despite George’s reported success, dogs are not yet standard equipment in hospitals. “This idea still has to be scientifically verified,” says Paul Waggoner, director of the canine and detection research institute at Auburn university in Alabama.

Sommerville wants to test if dogs can smell the difference between samples of urine from people with cancer and urine from healthy people. It’s not a crazy idea, says Waggoner. Many cancers are known to shed specific proteins into the bloodstream that can also make it into urine. If they have a distinct scent and dogs’ noses are sensitive enough to pick them up, it might just work.

Medicine has a long history of using smell to diagnose disease and groups at Imperial College, London and Cranfield University in Bedfordshire have worked on “electronic noses” to sniff out infections. Scientists tend to opt for sensors they have built because they are easier to calibrate reliably.

Waggoner says that it might make more sense to work out what cancer proteins can be found in the urine and develop a chemical test for those. An advantage of using dogs, he concedes, is that you don’t need to know what the telltale protein or other cancer-related chemical they are sniffing is.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.