Canine-Assisted Profiling of Lung Cancer from Human Breath

The use of dogs in tracking or detecting odor profiles is a well-known and useful technique. Mankind has exploited this capability during centuries of domestication to detect and locate missing persons, drugs and bombs. Although other animals also have this capability, none have the trainability or the social acceptance that dogs possess. Recently, dogs have been tested for their ability to make more complex discriminations leading to the detection of diseases such as cancer. The results have been positive however the studies suffer from lack of operational feasibility and reproducibility both in terms of training and results. Here, we combine and develop protocols from a leading dog-training institution specializing in canine detection activities with a medical hospital to identify lung cancer profiles from human breath through protocol optimization. Lung cancer is a disease that claims over 2000 deaths per year in Norway. Following diagnosis the 5 year survival rate is only 16%, thus representing a large socioeconomic burden upon society. This study will use techniques beyond the state of the art to optimize and define a reproducible and non-invasive method that has high sensitivity and specificity for cancer detection. It can be envisioned that the results of this study will initiate a process that is scaleable and could lend itself as a companion diagnostic tool in the screening of lung cancer and diagnosis.