Heeling to heal
When Penny the dachshund puts her nose to work, she has the potential to save lives. Penny is the pet of Homewood resident Laurie Malone, who is working on bringing an unconventional cancer detection tool to Birmingham.
With a sense of smell many times more powerful than a human nose, dogs have put their sniffers to use for centuries in hunting, tracking work or uncovering where their owner hid treats around the house.
More recently, however, some researchers have claimed that dogs can detect the distinct smell of cancerous cells, even before traditional medical screenings can pick up other signs.
Despite her research background at the UAB Lakeshore Research Collaborative, Malone’s introduction to “nosework” came from the world of dog lovers rather than science. Malone already had one dog, Sprout, before adopting Penny in 2008. Rescued from a puppy mill, Penny had a lot of fear issues stemming from previous trauma, so Malone tried to find a low-stress activity to bring the little dog out of her shell.
They tried out nosework, in which Penny was trained to identify and seek particular odors such as essential oils.
“Little by little I saw her confidence building. She loves sniffing,” Malone said. “I started realizing the power of the dog’s nose just watching them.”
As Malone saw her dog’s scenting abilities improve, she started reading about other ways humans take advantage of canine noses, such as finding narcotics and explosives. That’s how she learned about the research being done on cancer detection. It’s a field that is still in question and needs more scientific study to validate it, but Malone’s curiosity was piqued.
The studies that Malone has seen so far indicate that some compound within cancerous cells can be detected by dogs even in a patient’s blood, breath or urine.
“We don’t know exactly what they’re smelling, but the tumor emits some volatile organic compounds that are identifiable to them,” Malone said. “So far, they can detect those so much earlier than any machine or any screening protocol in place to date, so that’s why it’s so important to move this science forward, to make use of this amazing tool that we have.”
After more research, she and local nosework trainer Cindy Roberts traveled to California in October to become certified as biomedical scent detection trainers. Malone already had a nonprofit, the Sprout and Penny Canine Foundation, that she had set up in 2015 as a general canine welfare organization. After she and Roberts decided they wanted to bring medical scent detection back to Birmingham, the foundation was given a new focus with the Sniff 4 Life program.
Malone said her ultimate goal would be a nonprofit medical scent detection facility in Homewood. The facility could have a team of several trained nosework dogs — ideally rescue dogs, Malone said — to test patient samples for oncologists and research teams around Birmingham in hopes of detecting the early signs of cancer. She stressed that a positive response from the dogs would be a precursor to further medical testing, not a complete diagnosis.
“Of course it doesn’t replace medicine in any way, but if we can detect it sooner and save lives,” Malone said.
For cancers that aren’t often identified until their later stages, Malone said a scent detection dog could make the difference in a patient’s survival. Part of Roberts’ passion for medical nosework, Malone said, comes from her own mother’s lung cancer, which was misdiagnosed as pneumonia until it reached the late stages and was not treatable.
There are several steps to take on the path to creating the cancer detection facility Malone has in mind. First and most important is doing additional research into the effectiveness of canine odor detection. Malone said they plan research trials in 2017 to gather more data. While she’s excited about the possibilities, as a lifelong researcher Malone doesn’t want to get ahead of the science.
If trials produce the results she hopes for, Malone said their next goal will be finding a location and training more dogs, in addition to Sprout and Penny, in identifying cancerous cell odors. They’ll also have to make connections with local oncologists and researchers to put their dogs to work, as well as cancer organizations to provide grants so Sniff 4 Life can continue to run as a nonprofit.
While cancer detection has obvious potential benefits for humans, Malone said the dogs also reap the rewards. Scent detection gives them a job to do, with frequent rewards of treats, toys or petting. She said she never gets tired of watching her dogs track down a scent.
“I smile from ear to ear every time I watch them. And now to use that for something that can change human lives is just amazing,” Malone said.
And Penny, every time she puts on her purple “work” vest, is the perfect example of the good that nosework can do.
“Even Penny, who’s so scared of everything, that breaks through everything for her,” Malone said. “It’s a game to them. They’re getting rewarded at [the] source. They don’t realize the awesome things they’re doing with their nose.”
For more information, go to spk9.org.