Using smell to detect cancer early on
Health: University of Oklahoma professor is developing a machine that sniffs out disease

The device itself may be at least 10 years away.

The research hopefully will make early cancer detection more accurate and common, said lead researcher Patrick McCann, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at OU.

Many early detection methods sometimes cause adverse side effects that worsen a cancer patient's condition and still fail to spot cancer in its earliest stages.

"Our guide is the dogs, and the dogs are telling us that something is there,” said McCann, referring to research dating back as far as 1989 that links dogs' intense sense of smell to cancer detection.

When diseases such as cancer attack the body, there is often an increase in certain chemicals on the breath, said Bill Potter, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Tulsa who specializes in non-invasive diagnostics.

Many researchers are now studying this, Potter said, but it's what to measure that has been the problem.

"No one has a clear handle on the full suite, but there is a shift in metabolic patterns that give way to small molecules,” he said.

McCann hopes that further research in the medical field will help identify these possible early signs of cancer so that the machine he builds can detect them.