A new cancer sniffer called the eNose might not be as cute as that golden retriever that sniffs out cancer, but it could give doctors a new option when deciding on the best treatment for cancer patients.
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Using the patient’s breath, the eNose — similar to a breathalyzer — can detect with 85% accuracy if a person with non-small cell lung cancer will respond to immunotherapy, a type of treatment which fights off cancer cells, according to Discover Magazine.
Immunotherapy is effective in only about a fifth of patients and the standard invasive biopsy and test to find out if the treatment will work sometimes takes weeks for the results to come back from the lab. The eNose works in less than a minute, according to the report.
The eNose is mimicking some dogs that have shown an uncanny ability to detect impending seizures, cancer or even someone’s impending death.
Cancer appears to have a definitive smell. In one study, a Labrador retriever detected colon cancer nearly as accurately as a colonoscopy. When the dog was given breath and stool samples of more than 300 patients, he was able to make an accurate diagnosis 98% of the time.
The dog was particularly good at spotting early stage colon cancer — detecting the difference between polyps and malignancies — something that yet to be done with a colonoscopy.
Dogs’ proven ability to detect cancer in humans is largely due to the nearly 300 million receptor nerve cells that detect smell — compared to 5 million in humans. Canines have shown time and time again that they are able to detect cancer in humans from subtle smells in breath, skin, stool and urine samples and more.
In one study, two dogs picked out the breast cancer cell cultures that they had been trained to detect 100% of the time. These life-saving dogs even picked out different types of cancers that they were not trained to detect. Interestingly, they never picked out noncancer specimens, or "false positives," which is a worrisome and common problem with high-tech tests.
In addition to breast cancer, dogs have shown they are capable of picking out many types of cancer including early-stage, lung, prostate, uterine, colorectal and more. In many studies, the dogs had a 100% success rate in detecting cancer.
Cancer is an epidemic. In the U.S., 1,660 people are expected to die from cancer every day in 2019 and, worldwide, the death toll is about 21,000 people daily. So many of these deaths are unnecessary because they're preventable and treatable.
Some people shy away from conventional and toxic cancer treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy, while others choose a combination of conventional and alternative treatments.
Hope4Cancer, located in four countries, including Mexico and Columbia, focuses on customized and nontoxic cancer treatment including immunomodulation, nutrition, detoxification, oxygenation, gut microbiome restoration and the spiritual and emotional aspects of healing.
Therapies may include pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, antimicrobials, anti-inflammatories, anti-angiogenic therapies such as hyperthermia and near-infrared light therapy and biological intravenous therapies such as vitamin C and laetrile.
Over 90% of Hope4Cancer’s patients arrive with Stage 4 cancer or have severely metastasized cancers. Hope4Cancer has a 76% two-year survival rate, and their five-year survival rate is thought to be in the 70% range.