Nosy Dogs Help Inventors Create Laser Cancer Detecting Breathalyzer Tool

Dogs have long been accepted as man’s best friend. But nosy ones have provided inspiration to a laser research team working on early cancer detection methods to devise a breathalyzer-type tool that could significantly improve survival rates for suffering millions.

Researchers at University of Oklahoma are reportedly working to create a sensor to detect bio-marker gases exhaled in the breath of a person with cancer, picking up on earlier studies showing that dogs can detect cancer by sniffing the exhaled breath of cancer patients.

In a study published two years ago, it was found that dogs identified breast and lung cancer patients with accuracies of 88% and 97%, respectively by smelling breath samples.

It has been proven elsewhere that gas-phase molecules are uniquely associated with cancer but the team will use nanotechnology to improve laser performance and shrink laser systems, which would allow battery-powered operation of a hand held sensor device.

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Dr. Patrick McCann, himself not a cancer researcher, believes that a device that measures cancer specific gases in exhaled breath would change medical research, as we know it. But he said his team’s research on developing innovative laser technology was meant to benefit the millions of people who would otherwise suffer from a late-stage cancer diagnosis.

Even though studies confirm that dogs can detect cancer by smelling the gases, they can’t tell us what gases they smell. It’s up to the medical research community using the best measurement tools to figure that out.

Dr McCann,who has degrees in engineering physics and electronic materials, went out of his discipline to pioneer this dog-inspired research and says, “The science supports it, and the dogs tell us there is something there.”

Image credit: Kalimistuk at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

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