Udi Bobrovsky, Co-Founder of SpotItEarly, details how the business is using dogs to detect cancer.
SpotItEarly is an innovative Israeli business that is shaking up the healthcare industry with an unorthodox cancer screening method. Founded in 2019, the company’s mission is to revolutionize the way cancer is detected and diagnosed, making it easier, faster, and more accessible to everyone. The business has made this possible by using the capabilities of a slightly strange test method – a dog’s sense of smell.
As it turns out, our canine friends have incredibly sensitive olfactory senses which can detect the scent of cancer even in the early stages.
“We were looking to do something impactful for the world and for humanity,” Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer Udi Bobrovsky explained. “We started reading around and looking through some studies and looked for how we can do something which will bring value. Cancer is a huge problem in the world today and part of the solution is to find it early. If you find it early you can save nine out of 10 people, whereas if you find cancer in the later stage, only one in 10 people will survive.”
The problem that SpotItEarly is trying to solve is significant. Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and early detection is critical for successful treatment. However, the traditional methods of detecting cancer, such as mammography and biopsies, are invasive, time-consuming, and can often produce inaccurate results.
The solution to this problem is a non- invasive test which can be done by the user at home, applying and breathing into a mask for five minutes and then sending the sample off to be examined by the dogs.
This approach has several advantages over traditional cancer screening methods: “This screening option doesn’t require any co-ordination or involvement from other people, which makes it a quicker and cheaper solution. We are also able to screen for multiple types of cancer with one sample. We can look for lung, colon, breast, and prostate cancer.”
The screening is currently in clinical trials, which are producing encouraging findings: “We haven’t finished the clinical trial yet but we’ve had some very promising results and we have been able to reach a very high accuracy level,” Udi explained. “We’ve achieved over 90% accuracy, which is quite high. But the more encouraging result is that we’re also receiving really promising results with finding early cancer results.”
After clinical trials, the product could be reaching consumers by as soon as next year: “We hope to finalise the study by October this year. It then has to go through clinical validation and regulations, but we hope to have this done and have the product commercialised by 2024.”