Dogs have been said to be man’s best friend for untold centuries, and to sit around a campfire, sipping on some piping hot chocolate while roasting marshmallows, retelling tales of your pooch’s glorious past and how he saved your life countless times is something legends are made out of. Well, that might not be too far fetched in the future, as from 2008 onwards, researchers led by György Horvath MD, PhD, discovered that dogs could be trained to literally sniff out cancer. Their study showed specially trained canines being capable of telling different types and grades of ovarian cancer, including borderline tumors. This has led Horvath and professor Thomas Linblad from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and researcher Jose Chilo from Gävle University to work together, creating an electronic nose in the same vein which can also accomplish the same task. The ultimate goal of this work would be to arrive at the day when blood samples can be screened from apparently healthy women, helping detect ovarian cancer at an early stage when a cure is still possible.
