Pauline Blomfield: K9 Medical Detection CEO on the success rate of dogs trained to detect ovarian cancer

Early trials have shown medical detection dogs picking up ovarian cancer with an incredible accuracy. 

Two of K9 Medical Detection's specially trained dogs, Hunter and Hogan, have been taught to track the early stages of ovarian cancer - and the pair have a 96 to 100 accuracy rate.

K9 Medical Detection CEO Pauline Blomfield says many cases of ovarian cancer are detected at later stages, and identifying it early could save lives.

"We know that ovarian cancer is hard to detect, because it mimics the common conditions and diagnosis is normally late. 85 percent of people diagnosed with ovarian cancer are diagnosed in the late stages - when treatment is limited." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News talks'b right now.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Early trials have SHOWNE medical detection dogs picking up her
varian cancer with incredible accuracy. Two dogs, two very clever
and very cute dogs, Hogan and Hunter, have been trained
to detect the cancer in the early stages of the disease.
So far in trials, the pair have a ninety six
and one hundred percent accuracy rate. The dogs are trained

(00:35):
by company Canine MD, CEO and founder. Pauline Blomfield is
with me now, Good morning, Pauline, Good morning. Do I
dare ask who's the who's the ninety six and who's
the hundred?

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Hogan was the ninety six? Sorry, Hunter with the ninety
six and Hogan with THEE. Yeah. I mean I've just
knocked it out of the park, haven't.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
They Talk me through the early trials and the success
you have found with detecting the Iberian cancer.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Sure. Well, to start with, we do work with specialists
that are actually working with ovarian cancer themselves, and what
we do is that we identify those cancer cell lines
and then we grow them in our laboratory and it's
this that we imprint the dogs on the odor that's
actually released from the cancer. So just to be clear,
the dogs aren't detecting cancer, they are detecting the odor,

(01:26):
the specific odor that's released from those cancer cells. So yeah,
it's proved really, really successful without those early stage validations.
I mean, you can't ask so much more, can you?
When it's around about one hundred percent. But these validations
that we do, they are under the supervision of biostatistician
and she sets our study design and then analyzes the

(01:47):
results so people can have confidence that it has been
done scientifically.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Is this quite significant given that ovarian cancer can be
hard to diagnose early?

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Oh, it's huge, absolutely huge. I mean we know that
ovarian cancer is hard to detect because it mimics other
common conditions and diagnosis is normally late. I mean eighty
five per cent of people diagnosed with ovarian cancer are
diagnosed in the late stages when treatments limited. One person

(02:18):
dies every forty eight hours. So if we can have
that early non invasive diagnoses, it's going to be massive.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
What other cancers have the dogs had success detecting.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
We've got other dogs that we have for bowel cancer,
and their collective success rate that ranges from ninety eight
to one hundred percent success for bowel cancer, and we've
also got prostate cancer dogs again collectively that's between nineteen
one hundred percent success.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Amazing. So what is the potential for this method of
detecting cancer?

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Excuse me? I think it's it's enormous because it's a
non invasive you know, we can reach people of any age,
any ethnicity, and we have to remember that cancer doesn't discriminate,
and the numbers tell a sobering story. I mean, Zealand
has one of the highest rates of cancer in the world.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Is it more efficient than other forms of testing?

Speaker 3 (03:14):
Well, if we look at our current bowel screening program
where we're looking for blood in the stall, that sensitivity
is eighty percent and that missus twenty percent of bowel
cancers the colonoscopy, it's the most accurate screening test we've got,
but it's resource intensive and it's invasive, and then of
course we've got to look at those cultural aspects and

(03:36):
younger ages. I mean, that's been in the news lately,
hasn't it. So giving a urine sample has not been
met with any form of resistance so.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
You're using just two dogs at the moment for the
ovarian cancer.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
How well, lots of the press, stop the press. We
now have three where you have a labrador called Sky.
She has become our third ovarian cancer detection dog and
she actually her birthday was yesterday, twelve months old and
again phenomenal recognition to over can ovarian cancer.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
That is very exciting. I thought she would her name
would begin with an H though, So how many samples
can they get through?

Speaker 3 (04:20):
Well, each dog can detect three hundred samples each week,
so one trainer work can work three dogs and they
need a laboratory technician working alongside of them. So the
enormous is huge. We do have the ability to scale
it as well.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
And so how long does it take to train a
dog to get to the point where they're you know,
getting one hundred percent accuracy rate.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
So we start when they're eight weeks old. When when
we first get them, we teach them games because to
the dogs, all of it is a game. We teach
them to go out and find this odor and they
get rewarded for it. So at the end of the day,
the sad reality is that it comes back to funding.
So we need funding for our trainers, for our nurses,

(05:09):
for our laboratory technicians, so that depends on the number
of trainers that we can have and we're very very fortunate,
of course, as you will be aware that we've just
received support from the global company Royal Canon. Now they're
out of Australia and the Royal Canon Foundation is out
of France. Now two global companies have come back and

(05:32):
supported us and said this has huge potential, so for
us to be able to scale it up, we're going
come on New Zealand, let's back this.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Ah look. Thank you so much for your time this morning,
Pauline really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
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