Dog Blog Issue Ten

All you have to do is dream

It is hard to believe it was only six short years ago that K9MD founder Pauline Blomfield decided to take perhaps the biggest step of her life and turn a dream into a reality.

It all began with Blaze, Pauline’s beloved German Shepherd - a talented search and tracker dog - and Pauline’s absolute conviction that a dog’s acute sense of smell could be put to excellent use in the detection of disease. Pauline being Pauline, it did not take her long to convene a group of health professionals and scientists to work out how to get the concept off the ground and formulate a strategy for the future of K9MD NZ.  With a focus initially on some of New Zealand’s deadliest forms of cancer, K9MD had a vision to create a simple non-invasive diagnostic test to help as many people as possible beat a disease that kills thousands of Kiwis every year. In this issue of the Dog Blog, we’ll take a look at how close K9MD is to realising that goal.

That’s the way the money goes

Starting a medical detection charity with game changing prospects for the health of all New Zealanders is not for the faint hearted.

With no Government funding or health contracts to provide an income, Pauline put her own life savings into K9MD to get it underway, such was her belief in the difference it could make to people’s lives. Even now, K9MD relies entirely on the generosity of ordinary Kiwis, and funding from grants and sponsorships. And the costs of running a research and training facility are eye-watering to behold. Looking back over the last six years, it’s easy to see what a valuable investment that support has been.

At the outset, Pauline had to find a base of operations and the first major expenditure was to open the K9MD NZ Training and Research Centre at Invermay in Mosgiel. The new facility had to be fitted out with training rooms, laboratories, office space for the two-legged staff and kennel space for the four-legged staff to rest in between training and detection work.

Donations have helped to fund the many and varied costs over the years of running the Centre, including rent and other overheads, dog equipment, vet fees, trainers and laboratory staff salaries, laboratory costs and equipment. Some of these items are more exciting than others, of course. The purchase of fridges and freezers, for example, for the storage of samples, might not get the blood pumping, but you’d be surprised how enthusiastic laboratory technicians can get over a new autoclave (steriliser) required to ensure strict hygiene is upheld with no cross contamination of samples. Much of K9MD’s equipment is unique and had to be designed from scratch to be fit for purpose, and adapted over the years as training methodologies develop. The scent detection stands, for example, were designed and refined by Pauline herself and custom built to her exact specification to ensure the dog’s work ethic is of the highest standard and samples remain pure and test results unbiased.

Over the last six years, K9MD has recruited an additional seven new dogs to join the originals, Frieda and Levi, with consequent growing costs for transport, training and welfare as the canine team expands. The dogs enjoy family life when they are not at work, living with foster families or Pauline in their homes. They travel to work each day in specially kitted-out vans (fondly called the ‘school buses’) to ensure their safety and comfort. So, we’ve had to purchase vehicles large enough to transport two - four dogs at a time and have them fitted with dog crates and other safety features. To manage the growing canine team, K9MD had to recruit more specialist trainers and laboratory technicians, and now have seven on staff, including an in-house canine welfare and fitness trainer to maintain the dogs in the peak of health. Growth has also meant the need to expand the kennel area to accommodate more dogs, so this year a new kennel complex was funded and built, with air conditioning, comfortable secure individual spaces and new bedding to rest on during breaks.

The key to the whole thing, of course is the work undertaken by the dogs and their trainers, the laboratory technicians, the biostatistician, the clinical team and the medical specialists, in developing the diagnostic test for early-stage prostate, bowel and ovarian cancers.

To do this, K9MD needs patient samples to train the dogs for testing. We needed to recruit specialist nurses in Southland and Christchurch this year to meet with patients, collect samples and record necessary patient data to enable K9MD to train for bowel and prostate cancers detection. Additional nurses will be recruited later this year to collect samples for testing for ovarian cancer. Nurses in Wellington and Northland will also be recruited for both Bowel and Prostate cancers.

K9MD is grateful for grants received to date to cover the cost involved in working with patient samples, which (for the nurses only) is approximately $50,000 per patient group/region. This makes every dollar it takes to provide these samples truly worthwhile.

Let’s see how far we’ve come

The measure of success is not in how much money is spent, though, it’s in what has been achieved. How close has this brought K9MD to achieving its mission to improve the health of all New Zealanders? Well, we’re not quite at the point of being able to ask your GP to send your urine samples to the K9MD centre to be tested, but we have come a very long way towards that.

Let’s look at our success to date. In 2020 K9MD began their first cancer trials to confirm their training methodologies, and in 2021 progressed to validation trials to demonstrate the accuracy of this unique diagnostic tool.

The dogs began working with laboratory-made cancer samples. This was a world first, and Levi passed his proof-of-concept stage for bowel cancer detection with 98.4% sensitivity (correctly identifying all samples with cancer) and 100% specificity (correctly ignoring all samples that did not have cancer).

Frieda passed her proof-of-concept validation for prostate cancer detection with 100% in both sensitivity and specificity. This proof-of-concept requirement was a huge leap forward for K9MD, as it demonstrated that the principle of using dogs to detect the odour of the volatile organic compounds of cancer had practical diagnostic potential for cancers in the real world.

Following on from this Weta completed her proof-of-concept stage for bowel cancer detection with another perfect score of 100% for both sensitivity and specificity. 

Then , in 2023, Magic completed his prostate cancer validation with high marks at 87.76% sensitivity and 98.8% specificity.

This year, Ace has completed his proof-of-concept validation for prostate cancer, achieving 90% sensitivity and 97% specificity.

These results show K9MD’s methodologies to create a new simple non-invasive diagnostic test are highly successful.

Hero, meanwhile, our youngest bowel cancer trainee, is successfully detecting bowel cancer in artificial urine and will complete his Proof of Concept validation very soon.

Moving to stage two - Diagnostic Test Accuracy using patient urine samples, both Levi and Weta secured the distinction of another world first by successfully detecting bowel cancer in real patient urine samples. Training will continue until the dogs are working at a high level of proficiency (which means we have to get a lot more patient samples from throughout New Zealand) before they can complete their next validation.

K9MD has also commenced research for the early detection of ovarian cancer. Currently, there is no early diagnostic test available for ovarian cancer and one woman dies every 48 hours in New Zealand from this disease. Young dogs Hogan and Hunter have commenced training for Ovarian cancer detection and are currently successfully detecting the volatiles from laboratory grown ovarian cancer cells at 3% concentration. Hogan is due to complete his Proof of Concept validation very soon.

Working under strict ethical conditions, K9MD has started to secure partnerships with cancer specialists around the country in order to obtain the necessary patient samples for Levi, Weta and Hero for their bowel cancer training and samples for Frieda, Magic and Ace, for their Prostate Cancer training to enable them to complete their 2nd stage validation of Diagnostic Test Accuracy.

Later this year, we begin work with ovarian cancer patient samples.

K9MD has not rested on its laurels, despite all these achievements.

Constantly striving for excellence in training standards for the dogs, K9MD invited world renowned Seattle-based canine scent training specialist Steve White to visit K9MD’s canine centre in June to peer review training strategies and systems and recommend improvements.

Steve was mightily impressed by the work K9MD is undertaking and described the visit to local news reporters as, “the highlight of a 50-year career.” He went on to say that “no-one else in the world is doing this kind of work to the standard it is being done here, and that, this particular organisation is the most sophisticated that I’ve seen of anyone trying to do this sort of work. It’s absolutely exciting to see.” (We’ll talk more about Steve’s visit in another issue.)

Has the road been hard for K9MD? Of course it has. And continues to be with more funding to find and more hoops for Pauline to jump through to achieve her dream. But is it worth it to change the fortunes of cancer sufferers? Absolutely.

K9MD wishes to thank everyone who has donated, funded and sponsored us, and those who continue to support us in our work. We are so very grateful.