Bengaluru Startup Dognosis Pairs Cancer-Sniffing Dogs with AI to Detect 20+ Cancer Types

This Bengaluru startup is training dogs and AI to sniff out cancer early

Dognosis pairs trained sniffer dogs with artificial intelligence to flag cancer from a breath sample. It is a charming idea aimed at a real problem, with equally real caveats: this is prescreening in trials, not a proven diagnostic. A dog's nose has long outclassed most laboratory kit, and a two-year-old Bengaluru startup called Dognosis is betting it can turn that biological talent into a screening tool. The company pairs trained sniffer dogs with sensors and artificial intelligence to flag early signs of cancer from a single breath sample, the latest entry in a busy field where AI is being pointed at cancer detection. The process is disarmingly simple at the patient's end. You breathe into a mask, which is then couriered to Dognosis's facility, a farm outside Bengaluru, where beagles, labradors and Dutch shepherds sniff the sample. As they do, sensors and AI read the animals' movements, respiration, brain activity and body language, translating a pause or a wag into structured data. The premise is that tumours leave a chemical signature in exhaled breath, one a dog can smell long before conventional tools can see it. There is no imaging, unlike the systems trained to spot breast cancer on an X-ray, no blood draw and no biopsy. The AI layer is meant to do the unglamorous work of standardising an animal's reaction into something repeatable. Founded by Akash Kulgod, Dognosis says its approach targets more than 20 cancer types across seven groups, including breast, oral cavity, lung and cervical. In Phase 2 trials published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the company reports roughly 90% sensitivity for early-stage cancers. Dogs trained on 10 cancer types, it adds, went on to identify an 11th they had never been shown. Those accuracy and detection figures are, for now, reported by the company and its researchers rather than independently confirmed. The pitch makes most sense against India's grim cancer arithmetic. The country logged about 1.5 million new cases and more than 900,000 deaths in 2024, one of the world's heaviest caseloads, yet screening rates are strikingly low. Roughly 1.9% of women are screened for cervical cancer, and fewer than 1% for breast or oral cancers. Much of that gap is a matter of cost, distance and the discomfort of invasive tests. A cheap, non-invasive tool aimed at preventative healthcare could reach people the formal system never touches, which is precisely the market Dognosis is chasing. Dognosis raised a $1.5m pre-seed in 2024 and has since closed a further, undisclosed round, with Accel India and Caffeinated Capital among its backers. Neither has put a figure on the latest round. The roadmap is ambitious. Kulgod plans an at-home, multi-cancer prescreening test in India next year, priced at a few thousand rupees. A Phase 3 trial began in April across 10 hospitals, aiming to enrol about 10,000 participants, and the company is targeting a million tests a year with a one-week turnaround, run by around 30 dogs. A US facility is pencilled in for late 2027 or early 2028. There is a regulatory wrinkle worth flagging. Kulgod notes that Dognosis needs no Indian regulatory approval, because a prescreening tool is not classed as a diagnostic device. That lowers the barrier to launch, but it also means the technology could reach patients without clearing the bar a formal diagnostic would have to. A positive result is a prompt to see a doctor, not a verdict, and the distinction is one the company will need to communicate carefully. The caveats matter. This is a prescreening tool designed to flag who should seek further tests, not a replacement for diagnosis, and the trials remain early. There is also a certain irony in the endgame, since Dognosis eventually wants to replace the dogs with sensors, distilling the nose into hardware. Whether or not that works, the underlying idea is a serious one: using the dog's nose as a biosensor standardised by AI, and aiming it squarely at a screening gap conventional medicine has struggled to close.

AI's new cancer-screening partner has four legs and a very good nose

A 10-minute breath sample could give cancer-sniffing dogs something important to say AI apparently doesn't need to replace every biological system. Dogs are still keeping their jobs, at least for now. An Indian startup from Bengaluru, Karnataka, is training dogs with sensors and machine learning. Patients breathe normally into a face mask for about 10 minutes, ship the sealed sample to a lab, and let the dogs get to work. The dogs are trained to identify changes in volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, associated with cancer. Sensors meanwhile track signals including movement, respiration, brain activity, and body language, which Dognosis' AI translates into standardized data rather than relying entirely on a human handler interpreting each animal's behavior. The early numbers are quite promising Dognosis' Phase 2 study included 1,502 participants, including 283 people with biopsy-confirmed cancer. Seven trained dogs helped identify more than 90% of cancers and more than 91% of non-cancer samples across seven cancer groups, with similar performance reported for early-stage disease. Recommended Videos The startup claims that the system targets more than 20 cancer types, including breast, lung, cervical, and oral cancers. Its Phase 3 trial began in April across 10 hospitals and aims to enroll roughly 10,000 people. Dognosis eventually wants around 30 dogs to support as many as one million tests annually. But you have to keep in mind that this isn't a proper diagnosis solution. BreathEasy is being developed as a prescreening tool, so a positive result would direct someone toward further medical testing rather than provide a cancer diagnosis. The current large-scale trials still need to establish how well the approach performs in broader clinical use. Dogs might be training their replacements The company wants to learn enough from canine olfaction to reproduce those abilities using sensors, potentially removing dogs from the process entirely. So even dogs aren't safe from being replaced. For now, their noses provide the biological sensing hardware while AI tackles consistency and scalability. Dognosis is targeting an at-home prescreening launch in India in 2027 for a few thousand rupees. If its larger trials hold up, breathing into a mask and letting an AI-assisted dog sniff it could become considerably less strange than it sounds.

Dognosis: Bengaluru-based startup leans on Cancer-Sniffing dogs and AI for early detection

Billy, Jessie and Banu are part of a team of beagles, labradors, Dutch shepherds and other dog breeds being trained by startup Dognosis to sniff out traces of cancer in human breath. On a two-acre farm outside Bengaluru in southern India, Billy, Jessie and Banu put on their gear, enter a laboratory packed with samples and clock in for a shift detecting early signs of cancer. Their most important diagnostic equipment is their noses. Billy, Jessie and Banu are part of a team of beagles, labradors, Dutch shepherds and other dog breeds being trained by startup Dognosis to sniff out traces of cancer in human breath. Dognosis is repurposing the canine sense of smell -- traditionally used to detect drugs or explosives -- for low-cost health screening and aiming to make early detection accessible to far more people. Dogs have previously been shown to detect illnesses ranging from cancer to Covid-19, and the two-year-old company aims to apply that capability at scale in India. It joins a small set of start-ups harnessing dogs' olfactory abilities to develop a non-invasive diagnostic tool with potential uses in public health. Patients breathe into masks sent to the company's facility, where dogs are exposed to the sample. Sensors and AI then interpret signals including the animals' movements, respiration, brain activity and body language to determine whether the sample carries signs of cancer -- without imaging scans, blood tests or biopsies. "It is like finding a needle in a haystack of who in a population has an undiagnosed case of cancer," said co-founder Akash Kulgod. Its backers include early stage investors such as Accel India and San Francisco-based Caffeinated Capital among others. They raised $1.5 million via a pre-seed round in 2024 and then an undisclosed sum recently. This is enough for the next two years if the firm sticks to its planned growth trajectory, Kulgod said. The dogs live together at Dognosis's farm and laboratory, are given walks and playtime and spend 30 minutes to an hour a day on the detection platform, where the work is designed as a game. Their reward: treats. During one recent session, two-year-old beagle Whiskey worked through 10 samples, bounding past the first five. At the sixth, she paused, sniffed, moved away and returned, circling for several seconds before the system marked it positive. 90% Sensitivity In a Phase 2 study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dognosis reported roughly 90% sensitivity for early-stage cancers across seven broad groups spanning more than 20 cancer types, including breast. According to Kulgod, the dogs also seem capable of expanding their detection abilities: trained on the scent of 10 cancer types, they identified an 11th they hadn't encountered before. The bigger test now is proving that performance holds up outside controlled trials. India has the third-highest prevalence of new cancer cases globally, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, while routine screening remains exceedingly rare. The agency estimated 1.5 million new cancer cases and over 900,000 deaths from the disease in India in 2024. Roughly one in 10 Indians are at risk of developing the disease before age 75. Breast cancer was the most commonly diagnosed type, followed by cancers of the lip and oral cavity, lung and cervix. Yet only 1.9% of Indian women surveyed in 2019-2021 said they had ever been screened for cervical cancer, while 0.9% had undergone exams for breast or oral cancer. Among men, just 1.2% reported having undergone oral cancer screening. Against the backdrop, Dognosis plans to launch an at-home, multi-cancer prescreening test in India next year for a few thousand rupees. Dognosis eventually aims to process 1 million tests a year, double its canine workforce to 30 and halve turnaround times to one week. It is also eyeing the US, where Kulgod said it could open a facility by late 2027 or early 2028. New Jersey startup SpotitEarly has reported similar results from canine cancer-detection trials, though such testing has yet to be commercialized. Getting there will mean showing that accuracy holds across larger, more varied populations, while building the logistics to move and process huge numbers of breath samples. It will also require persuading doctors and patients to trust a screening system built around dogs. Emerging technologies "offer exciting opportunities, but they should strengthen -- not replace -- existing screening programs," said Pankaj Chaturvedi, deputy director of the Centre for Cancer Epidemiology at Tata Memorial Centre in Mumbai. Dognosis is forging ahead, having kicked off its Phase 3 trial in April with 10 hospitals across India -- and plans to recruit about 10,000 people over 12 months. The study will test asymptomatic people at higher risk of cancer and survivors at risk of recurrence, and those flagged will receive conventional follow-up including imaging and biopsy. If the results stand, it plans to launch in Bengaluru next year before expanding across India through partnerships with diagnostic chains and healthcare providers. Kulgod says the test doesn't need Indian regulatory approval as it's a prescreening tool, rather than a diagnostic device. Only the latter is regulated in India. "A lot of people recognize we are already depending on dogs in life and death situations," he said. "The bottleneck all along was: how do you standardize and scale the dog's nose?"