We know that dogs have an enormous capacity to detect the odour of a tiny number of odour molecules. For years they’ve been trained to detect cancer in urine for example. They can detect various types of cancer; so refined is their nose and their trainability. The dog is incredibly useful in detecting disease and it is believed that every disease has an odour profile.
But you can’t walk around hospitals with dogs detecting diseases and so Dr. Andreas Mershin, a quantum physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has collaborated with Medical Detection Dogs to create an e-nose (an electronic device that works a bit like a dog’s nose but not quite as well!).
The e-nose has chemical sensors that make it capable of smelling urine samples by detecting volatile organic compounds which are tiny odour molecules in the air.
It is being tested on more than 5000 urine samples for patients at Milton Keynes University Hospital to detect prostate cancer in conjunction with controls from healthy individuals.
It is hoped that it will be a finished product and ready for clinical trials in hospitals within two years. It is also hoped that it can be integrated with smartphones.
Dr. Andreas said that “Dogs are diagnosing cancer earlier, faster and better than anything else out there in any hospital. These creatures are so smart and so capable, upon training they become uniquely sensitive to diseases, drugs, to bombs to anything. Dogs are leading the way and we should base technology on them. Phones have cameras and microphones on them; eventually we want them to have noses on them as well”.
The vision for the future is that smartphones can be used for this process with the addition of an electronic nose perhaps built into the phones. It is believed that they will be able to detect cancer rapidly which will save lives.
The dogs have provided humans with a gift. Nature can teach humans a lot. There are many answers in nature if we look for them.
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