Pauline Blomfield: K9 Medical Detection NZ Founder on the success of the dogs in detecting early signs of bowel and ovarian cancers

Dogs are on their way to sniffing out early signs of bowel and ovarian cancers. 

K9 Medical Detection New Zealand has had a 100% success rate in recent trials. 

The four-legged workers are trained to detect specific odours connected to bowel and ovarian cancers. 

CEO Pauline Blomfield told Heather du Plessis-Allan that the dogs are clearly detecting the odour released from cancer, but they’re not replacing any tests. 

She said that they’re currently working with scientists to identify the markers dogs are picking up on, because they don’t currently know what exactly the dogs are smelling.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Tancer detection dogs seem to have made a bit of
a breakthrough in Dunedin. They've been sniffing out the lab
samples of balal and ovarian cancer and they've actually had
one hundred percent success rate. And with us now is
Canine Medical Detection CEO Pauline Blomfeld.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Pauline hy, good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Were you expecting one hundred percent or to that blow
your mind?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
It always blows my mind when I see the dogs working.
To be fair, they are absolutely in credit. All we
expected a really high result, particularly with Canine Hogan for
ovarian cancer because he has been working exceptionally well and
when he goes into that test environment we never know
what they're going to give us. But spearing in mind,

(00:41):
these dogs can check sort of twenty samples and twenty
seconds with that one hundred percent accuracy. Absolutely, it blows
our mind.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Can you monetize this? Is this something that you can
roll out beyond the I mean, because these could just
be two very special dogs, right.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
We've got eight very special dogs. But yes, we do
select our dogs by genetics. But I guess to get
back to your question about rolling out, it's a stage
that we work through at the moment. Yes, these dogs
are working. They're clearly detecting the odor that's released from cancer,
but we're not replacing any current tests. Ultimately, this is

(01:21):
the holy grail for us. We are working with scientists
to actually I try and identify those markers that the
dogs are picking up on, because at the moment, we
don't know what the dogs are smelling. We know that
the volatiles released from cancerous cells, but we don't know
So that's the key. That's the thing that we want

(01:43):
to work towards, and that becomes a scalable.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
I know, dogs can smell a thousand million times whatever
better than us, right, sure can we smell cancer too?

Speaker 2 (01:55):
I believe there's probably a few people. I mean, this
is where the companies that create perfumes are always seeking
those individuals that have that exceptional olfactory ability. But yes,
the dogs, I mean they can detect one to two
parts per trillion, so for us humans at their equivalent

(02:19):
to one tea spin of sugar and two Olympic size
swimming pools some water. You know, yeah, I mean, you know,
how do you thank god I don't.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Have that ability? The ay pauline, because that would be
awful to be torture walking around sniffing everything. Pauline Blomfeld,
Canine Medical Detection CEO, How Amazing is That? For more
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