Penn Vet's Working Dog Center Cancer Sniffing Dogs

UNIVERSITY CITY (WPVI) -- Penn Vet's Working Dog center is now training a new set of dogs to detect cancer.

2-year-old Ivey is learning to use her keen sense of smell to locate one scent among canisters on a wheel.

When she gets good enough, researchers will switch to blood plasma from real cancer patients, to see if Ivey can sniff out ovarian cancer.

The goal isn't to use dogs as cancer detectors, but to identify specific compounds in it, for the development of an electronic nose.

"My dream is that dogs confirm that the electronic nose is working and we get that out into hospitals? So that thousands of thousands of women can be screened".

We've been following this project in Healthcheck for several years, and will continue to report on the progress.