More Sniffer Dogs Are Here to Sniff Out Cancer
posted in Animal Species |A Seoul-based biotechnology company and the owner of a dog trained to sniff out cancer cells from human beings, is most likely to be cloned in Japan. Ra Jeong-Chan, president of the RNL Bio brought to attention that cloned fetuses from the black Labrador retriever named “Marine” was implanted in a surrogate mother dog last month (April 2008).
Ra confirmed that the clones were going to be looked into at the end of May 2008. Marine, now six and a half years old, lost her ability to reproduce when her womb was extracted out of her because of the disease.
Marine’s master, Yuji Satoh, is a head trainer at the St. Sugar Cancer Sniffing Dog Training Center which is located in Shirahama, Chiba prefecture.
Yuji Satoh, claimed that the first cloned dog was created in 2005 of an Afghan named hound called Snuppy. Experts reveal that Snuppy is expected to become a father this month with the first breeding of cloned canines. Some skin samples were taken from Marine and brought to South Korea for cloning this year. Satoh has no qualms about cloning Marine. As Marine has been regarded as a dog with the highest cancer sniffing capabilities, making clones out of her skin samples can help generate further studies on cancer-sniffing dogs.
The owner cum trainer is also very proud that it is the first ever kind of cloning of the best cancer-sniffing dog Marine. It also reported that the owner together with the Korean firm is going to develop 2 clones of Marine which are going to be late trained at Satoh’s center. In that case, one is expected to stay on at Satoh’s center while the other will brought back to South Korea for further studies.
It is assumed that if the project involving the two little clone pups succeeds then experts will create more clones. Satoh asserted that creating clones out of Marine will help in the worldwide distribution of such cancer-sniffing dogs which can encourage further studies on the canine detection of cancer.
Cloning of Marine is expected to be of great help for researchers who are trying to establish whether dogs have the ability to detect lung, prostate, breast and skin cancer at an early and treatable stage.
Japanese researchers opine that dogs can sniff or detect cancerous cells through their breath and urine. RNL Bio’s last such project involved the cloning of a pet dog on the request from a lady from the United States who wanted a recreated pit bull.
The Korean firm confirmed that it charged as much as $150000 from the woman from California to clone her pit bull by using the tissues of her dead pet named Booger. Some seven clones were also created out of drug-sniffing dogs last year and it is assumed that these clones were easier to train than ordinary canines.