Hemangiosarcoma doesn't get any easier to witness, even after diagnosing it weekly in the emergency room for 20 years, as Dr. Cindy Otto experienced. Her extensive work with service dogs - some of them also heartbreakingly fallen victim to the disease - raised a question for her: Could it be possible to train dogs to sniff odors associated with this cancer?
In this project, founded by the Morris Animal Foundation, Dr. Otto aims to train dogs to detect distinctive odors from VOCs (volatile organic compounds released through the skin, body fluids, and in the breath) by using blood samples testing positive for hemangiosarcoma from the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study." and comparing them with samples collected at the University of Pennsylvania and from thousands of veterinarians nationwide of healthy dogs and other diseases.
The ultimate goal is not to have a trained dog in every diagnostic laboratory but to determine what VOC or combination of VOCs these dogs are finding and then leverage that data into a diagnostic test that can be mechanized.
The Morris Animal Foundation has launched the Hemangiosarcoma Initiative to provide resources to veterinary scientists like Dr. Otto, who are working to find new ways to diagnose and treat this terrible cancer.
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