Half of all dogs over the age of 10 will get cancer, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. If cancer is detected in its early stages, before symptoms may have even appeared, treatments like surgery or chemotherapy may help add several years to some of these animals’ lives.
Researchers at Virginia Tech recently published a study, where they concluded that a type of urine test, called Raman spectroscopy, is 92% effective at detecting cancer in dogs. The test uses a laser to detect a cancerous fingerprint in the molecules of patients with cancer.
“That would allow us to pick up cancer when it’s, perhaps, in the early stages of development and more treatable,” said John Robertson, a research professor at Virginia Tech’s biomedical engineering department. He’s also a trained veterinarian and has been working the past several years to better treat and detect cancer in animals and is part of the team that created a rapid urine test for dogs.
The method could be used to track how patients are responding to surgery or chemotherapy. “We’d like to be able to use the technology to monitor the effect of treatment and to be able to modify the treatment to more effectively treat the disease,” Robertson said.
The project has been an interdisciplinary collaboration from research and medical institutions across Virginia and North Carolina.
“We kid around saying that because this is translational, both dogs and humans; we’ve got animals helping people and people helping animals,” Robertson said.
He added that they’d like to scale up their lab in Blacksburg and hopes rapid urine tests that detect cancer could eventually be available through veterinary clinics.
They’re also researching similar tests that could detect cancer and other diseases in humans.
