{"id":102536,"date":"2026-02-01T22:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T22:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/102536\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T22:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T22:04:08","slug":"philadelphia-researchers-train-dogs-to-detect-silent-killer-canine-cancer-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/102536\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia researchers train dogs to detect ‘silent killer’ canine cancer | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here for updates on this story<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0PHILADELPHIA (KYW<\/a>) — There is new hope in the fight against a devastating cancer in dogs that is often deadly.<\/p>\n

Researchers at the Penn Vet Working Dog Center in South Philadelphia are training dogs to help detect hemangiosarcoma, a form of canine cancer.<\/p>\n

The dogs learn how to identify the cancer by smelling three boxes, with one containing a sample of malignant blood.<\/p>\n

“It really does feel like magic because I can’t smell anything from the samples. It’s a tiny drop of blood serum,” Clara Wilson, a researcher at the Working Dog Center, said. “We wanted to focus on hemangiosarcoma, which is a really devastating canine cancer.”<\/p>\n

Hemangiosarcoma is a tumor that is often called the silent killer because it grows in the body and goes unnoticed until it’s too late.<\/p>\n

In the first phase of the research, the dogs identified the cancer 70% of the time. And when they get it right, they get a treat.<\/p>\n

Until now, the research primarily focused on human cancers, with the dogs being able to identify ovarian and pancreatic cancer.<\/p>\n

“Dogs are very unique because they have this incredible sense of smell,” Wilson said. “It just really does feel amazing and gives me a lot of respect for understanding that there’s a lot of things that I can’t understand that they’re picking up on.”<\/p>\n

Once the dogs identify the cancer, researchers look for markers in the samples that could eventually be used to create a test that would find the cancer early, when it’s more treatable.<\/p>\n

“The idea is that if dogs can smell something, that means that there’s a signal to detect,” Wilson said.<\/p>\n

These dogs are laying the groundwork for eventually being able to find cancer early and save lives for both humans and animals.<\/p>\n

The working dog center also trains dogs to detect drugs, bombs and alert for medical conditions.<\/p>\n

\u200bCOPYRIGHT 2025 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Click here for updates on this story \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0PHILADELPHIA (KYW) — There is new hope in the fight against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12157,139,69,71,70,12158,295],"class_list":["post-102536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-national-and-world-news","tag-news","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-shareable-stories","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}