Thanks to extraordinary biology and comprehensive training, our dogs are able to find the odour of disease in human samples through recognition of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). VOCs are the byproducts of various biological processes in the body and can be found in breath, sweat, urine and other bodily fluids. Changes in the type or amounts of VOCs can signal specific health issues.

 Our dogs are trained to quickly screen samples and indicate to their handler when their target disease odour is found. Dogs offer a natural indication and most favour a sit or a stand and stare when they find their target odour. 

Our Cancer and Bio Detection Dogs are trained using positive reinforcement via the clicker training method, with treats or a ball reward, depending on each dogs individual preference. 

Early training teaches the dogs to use their nose to find their odour and practice using our specialist equipment. Once the dog is confident in finding the target odour and has learned to associate this with a reward, the target will be made increasingly more difficult to identify. The video below shows our dogs demonstrating some of our bespoke equipment. 

Our dogs are regularly presented with ‘blank runs’, meaning no target odour has been put out for the dog to find, which helps dogs differentiate between when the target odour is actually there versus when it’s not. Introducing blank runs into a training programme reduces ‘false positives’ (indicating the target odour is present when it’s not), as the dogs learn not to indicate randomly or out of habit. 

Blank runs paired with a balanced reward system not only keep our dogs motivated and focused, but also ensures the information we learn from our dogs is robust and reliable. Our research is particularly robust as we not only train dogs to find disease amongst negative samples taken from healthy participants, but they can also reliably find their target odour against a backdrop of complex control samples taken from patients with other diseases, making the target odour more difficult to distinguish. 

As if training dogs to detect disease in samples wasn’t incredible enough, some of our studies could see our dogs move outside the training room and learn to detect the associated odours on people in the community. The dogs use a 'passive search' method - meaning they sniff the odour directly on people – similar to search dogs you may have seen at airports or events. 

Click the button below to see how this incredible capability is powering groundbreaking clinical research. 

Our Projects