How do cancer-sniffing dogs sort biological samples? Exploring case-control samples with non-targeted LC-Orbitrap, GC-MS, and immunochemistry methods
Early identification of disease onset is regarded as an important factor for successful medical
intervention. However, cancer and other long-term latency diseases are rare and may take years to
manifest clinically. As such, there are no gold standards with which to immediately validate
proposed preclinical screening methodologies. There is evidence that dogs can sort samples
reproducibly into yes/no categories based on case-control training, but the basis of their decisions
is unknown. Because dogs are sniffing air, the distinguishing chemicals must be either in the
gas-phase or attached to aerosols and/or airborne particles. Recent biomonitoring research has shown
how to extract and analyze semi- and non-volatile compounds from human breath in exhaled condensates
and aerosols. Further research has shown that exhaled aerosols can be directly collected on standard
hospital-style olefin polypropylene masks and that these masks can be used as a simple sampling
scheme for canine scr...
Source: Journal of Breath Research - Category: Respiratory Medicine Authors: Joachim D Pleil, M Ariel Geer Wallace, James McCord, Michael C Madden, Jon Sobus and Glenn Ferguson Source Type: research
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