The Dogs That Sniff Out Cancer

The Nose Knows: The Benefit of Early Screening

Using dogs and their sense of smell is nothing new: canines are personal medical assistants who alert to dangerous conditions, and assist law enforcement in tracing both people, explosives, and illegal substances. Their olfactory system is so refined that they can detect a substance at one part per trillion – that’s the equivalent of a single drop of liquid in 20 Olympic-size pools.

SpotItEarly was founded by four entrepreneurs – one being the former head of a canine unit. Having someone on their team who understood the precision dogs are capable of was a pivotal cornerstone for the company. “Although he wasn’t coming from healthcare, he understood that the sensitivity of their sense of smell can be applied to basically anything,” explains SpotItEarly CEO Shlomi Madar. Despite the advances that have been made in treatments, detecting early-stage cancer remains expensive, unreliable in accuracy, and limited in scope: only about 14% of cancers are diagnosed using a recommended screening test. Cancer is at its most survivable in early detection – but 50% of cancers are detected at an advanced stage, when symptoms have begun to appear.

An at-home test that can screen for multiple early-stage cancers with a single breath sample would be a game-changer in the industry. SpotItEarly seeks to democratize cancer detection – offering affordable, easily accessible cancer tests to patients worldwide.

“And the reason we’re using dogs as sensors is because there is really no alternative on par with what the dogs are sniffing,” he explains. “We’re talking about three or four decades of research on electronic noses that has yet to catch up to what dogs do naturally.”

Technology helps to standardize the testing process: an essential criterion for something like cancer detection. To capture the cancer-linked volatile organic compounds (VOCs), patients breathe into a mask that is then sent to the lab. SpotItEarly built a system that produces gases from the mask in a measurable amount so that it can be introduced through the sniffing ports in a repeatable manner. Then the dogs will sniff the sample and indicate if cancer is present.

AI and technology come into play to understand the dog’s behavior. In a typical dog/human work relationship, a handler interprets the dog’s gesture – but this opens the process up to misinterpretation and human error. Often, dogs indicate positive scents in ways too fast or subtle for the human eye to notice (it takes them only a fraction of a second to recognize a scent compound).

Instead, SpotItEarly uses multiple cameras, audio sensors, and accelerometers to collect information on the dogs as they sniff – and algorithms to make sense of all the data. Whereas the human eye might struggle to decode the speed of a tail wag, machine learning can take a video and break it down frame by frame and pixel by pixel.

“In essence, we remove the human interpretation layer from the whole journey. So it’s the machine learning interacting with the dogs without intervention, and that removes biases,” Shlomi explains. “And that’s what really lifts up our accuracy level.”

According to SpotItEarly, a single lab facility and its dogs can deliver results on over a million tests per year.

And the results, so far, speak (or bark) for themselves. In a double-blind study conducted in Israel, 1,400 patients were tested for four major cancers – breast, prostate, lung, and colorectal – with 94% accuracy on results. For comparison, mammograms – which have been a breast cancer detection tool for decades – accurately identify about 87% of cancer cases.

While not in the lab, the dogs enjoy being part of the community – taking walks and playing in a backyard. According to the American Kennel Club, sniffing is a positive form of mental stimulation for dogs.

Navigating a New Frontier: the U.S. Market

It’s no exaggeration to say that SpotItEarly is poised to save millions of lives with their affordable, noninvasive cancer screening product. However, they first have to transverse a difficult valley that has caused many a promising startup to stall: entering the U.S. healthcare market. And for SpotItEarly – originally hailing from Israel – the process can be especially foreign to navigate.

“The way the health system is structured here – and I’m not talking about a particular health system, but on the national level – it’s very different from most countries in the Western world in the sense that you don’t have a single payer,” explains Shlomi. “You have two entities who will then do the insurance part and the provider care. This is unique, it creates a lot of different opportunities but also a lot of problems.”

Shlomi notes that startups hoping to launch in the U.S. must navigate a different regulatory system than they may not be used to – and need to be prepared for the extra time, finances, and data that this will inevitably require.

“One of the most apparent differences was just the timeline to even something like a clinical study. There are more layers of regulation here. It relates to many things, like legislation and the history of clinical studies in the U.S. In other countries, like Israel for example, you can start a clinical study like ours in a matter of weeks.”

Health systems are complicated to transverse even when startups are based in the U.S. – so approaching them without a native’s understanding of the system is an additional roadblock to international startups.

Luckily, the Science Center is here to help. The Science Center and SpotItEarly crossed paths during a 2023 U.S. Market Access Program in partnership with RISE with US part of the Assuta Medical Centers a four-week program geared toward helping international health tech startups commercialize in the U.S. Although this happened before Shlomi came on board as CEO, the startup was able to leverage the connections and engagements made through the Science Center into potential relationships with U.S. healthcare entities.

“We attended that program and it was great interacting with different entities that are doing what we’re doing, along with the multiple introductions and resources that were made available to us,” says Shlomi. “We also co-presented at multiple occasions, which came directly out of that.”

What’s Next: Off the Leash in the U.S.

SpotItEarly is on a roll – and fetching big results. They hope to eventually open a lab in the U.S., but for now they are working toward clinical studies and commercializing in the U.S., having established a U.S. office in January 2025. They’ve raised over $20 million so far, and are now seeking Series A fundraising to help them scale their U.S operations, conduct further studies, and prepare for U.S. commercialization.

In September 2025, SpotItEarly announced that it entered into a partnership with Hackensack Meridian Health to advance research on early breast cancer detection. This collaboration involves the Hennessy Institute for Cancer Prevention and Applied Molecular Medicine, the John Theurer Cancer Center, and Hackensack University Medical Center and will kick off with the PINK Study—a large, multi-center, double-blind observational trial enrolling 2,000 participants to focus on improving breast cancer detection.

If all goes according to plan, the company’s at-home cancer detection tests will be available to Americans through a physician network in 2026, with a single-cancer test costing $250, and later on a comprehensive panel will be sold at a reduced cost per cancer. Not only is this cheaper than many comparable options – it’s also far less invasive than many cancer detection options on the market, and can be done from the comfort of a patient’s home. In the future, the company is seeking FDA approval so that insurance reimbursement for test fees will be possible.

For Shlomi, calling this “work” for him is somewhat missing the mark.

“I’m obsessed with this company because it combines two of my passions, which is cancer and dogs. This is not work for me, I’m going to be honest,” he explains. “I’m very happy to be a part of this, and we really think that we can change the world with this solution. This is not hyperbole.”