Videos

This is Stewie, the Aussie, who belongs to Dina Zaphiris, founder of InSitu Foundation, a 501(c)3, dedicated to training dogs to detect early stage human cancer. Here, Stewie is fully trained, and exhibits a beautiful, clean and confident alert (a "paw and sit") at slot 1 containing the correct cancer sample. There are healthy controls in all of the other slots. Stewie is one of our best dogs, along with German Shepherd Schatzi. That's why they made all of the videos!!

This video depicts a fully trained, cancer detection dog. Stewie is an extremely meticulous worker, checking and re-checking all the holes before she alerts at the correct (early stage ovarian cancer) sample. It is a desirable trait that the detection dog checks all of the holes (ruling out any "healthy" samples) before alerting at the cancer sample. In this run, there are 5 samples, consisting of 1 disease control other than cancer, one cancer sample, and 3 healthy controls. We train our dogs to ignore other diseases (other than cancer).

We made this film for the BBC in 2006 and thought it about time we made it available online - especially in the light of new research this month (August 2011) from Germany showing that dogs can detect lung cancer to a high degree of accuracy. According to some reports, this is the first time that dogs have been shown to be able to do this - but as you'll see from our film, it isn't.

Can Dogs Smell Cancer? documents the whole history of dogs' ability to sniff out disease and we think it is a remarkable story.

It is a film I waited 20 years to make, after I covered the first anecdotal report of a dog detecting cancer as a print journalist (the story of Dalmatian Trudi who sniffed out a melanoma). I waited because I wanted the film to go beyond the anecdotal and it took all that time for anyone to conduct any scientific trials exploring the phenomenon in a controlled way.

There are many amazing sequences in this film... the incredible dogs at Florida State University who could detect chemicals at dilution of 1-2 parts per trillion... the dashed hopes of the team from Cambridge University when Bliss fails on the ultimate test... And then there is yellow labrador Kobi towards the end of the film. Hard to watch without a shiver running up your spine...

The film was shot, beautifully I hope you'll agree, by the unsung hero of Passionate Productions, Jon Lane - my partner in work and love.

Enjoy!

Jemima Harrison
Producer/Director
Passionate Productions
www.passionateproductions.com

Dogs are man's best friend and cancer is man's worst enemy. Over the millennia, canines have evolved alongside humans, aiding us to overcome obstacles in an ever-increasing number of ways. Now, their powerful sense of smell stands to help us defeat the deadliest disease of our time: cancer. Filmmaker Adriana LaCorte takes us on a journey through the past, present, and future of this ground-breaking new discovery and tries to determine just what it could mean for man (and animal) kind.

This teaser gives acknowledgement of Dina Zaphiris' passion on training these dogs and her personal connection with the fight against cancer.

www.caninesdetectingcancerthefilm.com

Bellamica Pictures / Gratitude International / Sub-Z Shakti Visions

Music by: Dexter Britain - "The Lost Ones"
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Dexter_Britain/Creative_Commons_Selection/The_Lost_Ones

"Moving Energy In The Right Direction"
DogsDetectCancer.org, BehaviorSavior.com
Dog trainer and behaviorist for over 20 years, now publishing research on training dogs to detect cancer early in human breath.

Janice Wolfe, founder and CEO of United K9 Professionals, demonstrates how Wyatt, a Rhodesian dog can detect cancer. Wyatt sniffs the breath of firefighters Eric Yetman, of Syracuse, and Marc Suggs, of Buffalo.

Coco is a labrador retriever who is being trained to find early stage ovarian cancer. Handler, Dina Zaphiris, clicks and rewards the dog for naturally lingering and becoming more animated at the cancer sample. Coco is a beginning dog, so Dina allows her to go "find" the same sample again for a second reward. Soon after training begins, we never allow the dogs to sniff an old sample. We always switch out the cancer sample (to a NEW PERSON'S sample) for thousands of runs. It is dangerous and detrimental to a dog's training to use only a few samples. That would mean the dogs are being trained to find a few specific samples, instead of learning to find and imprint the "odor of cancer". InSitu is connected with cancer patients all over the world, who graciously help us gather our samples, to train the dogs, and to keep them trained.

A.T. Charlie Johnson
Physics & Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania
“A ‘Bionic Nose’ to Smell Cancer - From Small Science to Major Applications”

Physicist A.T. Charlie Johnson, Director of Penn’s Nano/Bio Interface Center, understands that less is definitely more. Johnson forges groundbreaking basic discoveries in nanoscience that are then used in the development of important applications in industry and medicine. He is currently pursuing research to create a bionic nose, a nanoscale sensor device that he hopes one day will be used to sniff out cancer much like the olfactory capabilities of trained working dogs. He is also co-founder of the startup company Graphene Frontiers, which is headquartered in the University City Science Center.

Nicholas Kybert
Physics & Astronomy
University of Pennsylvania
"Nanotube 'Noses': Putting Sniffer Dogs out of Business"

As an all-surface material with environmentally-sensitive electrical properties, carbon nanotubes provide a unique platform for the fabrication of sensors that can detect subtle odor differences and trace chemical residues quickly and reproducibly. This talk will cover advances in scalable fabrication of the devices and their application to challenges ranging from the detection of traces of explosives to 'smelling' cancer. While these experiments are still being conducted in the research laboratory, the opportunities and potential real-world applications that could emerge from this work are wide-ranging and highly impactful.

Dina Zaphiris, founder of InSitu, is playing "alert games" with Katy. Dina is beginning to deploy dogs from outside the room, to ensure the dogs work independently of the handler. Dina can see Katy, so she knows when to click the clicker and enter to give Katy her reward. Katy, however, can't see her handler Dina, so she must work independently. Katy has a very clear "down" upon finding the cancer.

Here's Schatzi, working through a cancer detection scenario with disease controls and distractor scents. Once again, we challenge the dog to become more and more specific throughout his training. Distractor scents (strange or exciting scents that may cause a dog to false alert) are put into the mix once a dog is fully trained and advanced. We then add in disease controls (diseases other than cancer) and distractor scents (cat urine, dead animal, female in season, etc...). The dog must learn to IGNORE ANY AND ALL OTHER SCENTS except the exact combination of volatile organic compounds which make up "cancer". Schatzi never gives false positives, and this is because of the rigorous training techniques that are taught from early on in the dogs training.

Boston terriers, Pugs, French Bulldogs, Shih-Tzus, Pekingese: You know them as YouTube stars, celebrity arm-candy and Instagram sensations, but they’re also making important contributions to research in one of the most deadly kinds of cancer: https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/2017/november/short-snouted-dogs-unlikely-partners-for-brain-cancer-researchers

This is the first time that we are testing the dogs abilities to distinguish benign tumors from cancerous tumors in plasma taken from women with breast cancer / or from women with benign tumors.

Trials in the UK are currently assessing if dogs could be used to detect prostate cancer at an early stage. One study shows that specially trained dogs can pick up the presence of such cancer in urine samples in 93% of cases. Politician Iain Duncan Smith's wife Betsy was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009, and became involved with the charity Medical Detection Dogs.

In an exclusive film for the Victoria Derbyshire program, he says he wants to see it rolled out across the UK’s health service.

This is Fred, the Vizsla, learning on lead to detect ovarian cancer. At this point, he stops (does not check the entire rack) when he finds the cancer sample. It's important to reward him, even if he didn't search the entire rack, at this point in training. His thinking is, "well, if I find the cancer, I may as well stop there.... why should I keep looking??" Very soon in his training, however, he will learn to search the ENTIRE rack, which gives the dog higher accuracy rates in SPECIFICITY. For beginners, it's important to reward the small achievements along the way, incrementally demanding more of the dog as he advances. Good job, Fred!!