Cancer and Bio-Detection Dogs is a world leading research project looking into how dogs can smell the odours given off by cancer.

Claire Guest is training dogs to sniff out cancers. She told The Bucks Herald how the project started.

She said: "One of my colleagues at Hearing Dogs for the Deaf had a dog that kept paying attention to a mole on her leg about 30 years ago.
"She went to the GP who looked at it, thought it was okay but removed it. She was then called back in to be told she had a malignant melanoma, a serious form of skin cancer, but there are similar stories throughout the world."

Miss Guest then heard an interview on the radio from Dr John Church who was looking for ways that humans and animals can work together for medical purposes.

She said: "We then did the first study, which proved for the first time in the world that the dogs could be trained to identify patients with cancer rather than other diseases from just a urine sample.

"Those findings were published in the British Medical Journal in September 2004 with a plea to continue the work and develop it."

However, circumstances meant the project was put on hold and with no training facilities until the middle of last year.

The organisation now has a year's lease at Westcott Venture Park with very basic facilities that they are looking for help to develop so they are more appropriate for the training.

They are doing the work with Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust and their funding comes through Amerderm Research Trust.

Anecdotally , dogs have detected breast cancer, bowel cancer, malignant melanoma and lung cancer, however there have not been full clinical trials on these.

Clinical trials have been done on bladder cancer that have been going very well.

The trained dogs have five urine samples put out in front of them, one is known to contain bladder cancer while the other four have other diseases. The dog then goes along the line, sniffing each one, and when it smells cancer it lies down in front of the appropriate pot. The dog then leaves the room, the pots are moved around and the trial is repeated.

As an organisation they are currently applying to get charitable status. Miss Guest added: "Our remit is to train dogs to identify and diagnose disease through smell.

"This is the bio-detection part of it, but in addition to the research project we are already training dogs to detect hypoglycaemic episodes within diabetes patients."

These dogs alert their owners when they are about to have an episode so that they prevent it.

Anyone wishing to offer donations to Cancer and Bio-detection Dogs can do so through Amerderm at www.amerdermtrust.co.uk which is based at the department of dermatology at Amersham.

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