For us, it's about giving cancer patients hope and options. One way you give patients options is through early detection.
These were not super dogs. They were just ordinary household pets.
It's all about early detection. If you find the cancer early enough, you can give patients options.
That's better than chance. But it's not clinically significant.
Canine scent detection of cancer was something that was anecdotally discussed for decades, but we felt it was appropriate to design a rigorous study that seriously investigated this topic to better evaluate its effectiveness.
Cancer cells emit different metabolic waste products than normal cells. The differences between these metabolic products are so great that they can be detected by a dog's keen sense of smell, even in the early stages of disease.
If dogs can detect cancer early, we wanted to investigate it. If you get time, you get hope.