- Joy has a superpower.
- I am known as "The Nose."
I have used my nose to smell diseases.
- Joy can smell Parkinson's, tuberculosis,
cancer, almost everything.
- The week before lockdown started, I had COVID,
and I could smell myself.
- One day, we all could have this power,
and to get us there,
scientists are studying some of the best noses on Earth.
- Your body constantly leaks
biologically-relevant information.
This ability to diagnose by scent
is something that we can achieve technologically.
- And eventually build an electronic nose so small
it could fit in our phones.
- We have these machines in our pockets;
they have a mouth, they have a ear
and they have a eye, already.
What they need is a nose.
Imagine the power of having
100 million diagnostic phones in 100 million pockets.
If dogs can smell a disease earlier, faster, cheaper,
and better than any clinical tests that we have currently,
we should be able to harness this technology
and put it everywhere.
- This is "Just Might Work,”
a show about surprising solutions to our biggest problems.
- There is, strangely enough. Perhaps it's the heat—
there is a smell from the lights.
- Joy has had an incredible nose her entire life.
It's called hyperosmia,
the overwhelming sensitivity to smells.
In fact, it runs in her family.
- My grandmother taught me that people didn't understand it.
- Joy's husband Les, who had Parkinson's,
helped her harness the power to diagnose disease.
- He came home from work one day;
I thought, "Hm, gosh, that smell’s got a lot worse."
I used to describe it as quite a musky, greasy smell.
So I did say to him, "You've not showered,"
and, of course, he was quite annoyed
because he had been showering,
and I had to let it go.
- Even when Les was diagnosed,
Joy didn't realize she was smelling Parkinson's.
It wasn't until 30 years after she first noticed the smell
when they went to a Parkinson's support meeting,
that she understood her superpower.
- I realized that other people with Parkinson's
smelled exactly the same as him.
It wasn't until years later
that I began to realize throughout my nursing,
I had used my gift to help people.
- The realization inspired Joy
to put her nose to work
to determine the exact smell of Parkinson's,
travel to Africa to smell tuberculosis,
which she says smells like brine,
and go to California to study cancer’s earthy smell.
- Imagine being able to do that without having to go to Joy.
And imagine being able to do that
for many different conditions.
- But there's a problem—
replicating olfaction has proven to be difficult.
Smell is complicated.
- The problem isn't so much in the detection;
the problem is in making sense of it.
- We generally understand how our noses function—
take a sniff, odors enter our nose,
receptors interact with those molecules,
then a signal is sent to the brain.
But what we don't know
is how we make sense of the complex chemical composition
of every smell,
something that Joy and dogs are particularly good at.
- What they're seeing is the footprints
that a disease such as cancer leaves on your body odor
no matter where the emanations are.
This is quite remarkable; no analytical tool can do it.
Nothing has beat the dog yet at the understanding part
because, in the real world,
we have a literally unlimited number of new scents
being produced every day.
- But Andreas' breakthrough came
when he realized we don't need to understand
exactly how our noses work
to be able to replicate the ability electronically.
- What we're trying to develop here
is artificial dog intelligence.
This is the evolution of the ‘Nano-Nose,’
this piece of plastic with horrible epoxy around it.
This is very large, very heavy.
I had this brilliant idea
to have three nostrils instead of two—
it ended up not working.
In the end, we ended up with this.
It's a very simple design; it fits in your smartphone.
Currently, what the technology is,
it is sort of half biological, half electronic,
so it's a bit of a cyborg situation.
- Andreas' design sort of works like a nose.
It consists of synthetic protein receptors
grown from the same ones in our noses.
An electric current amplitude moves up and down depending
on the receptors’ response to that scent.
Then it's analyzed by artificial intelligence.
- To have this superpower in your pocket is possible,
the technology is available, it's all about integration.
- A handful of researchers
are pursuing the same goal with different applications—
noses that can detect cable fires,
spoiled food, or explosives.
But soon, a super-smelling smartphone
could save our lives.
- Scent data from each person
would be transformative for society.
Currently, we're experiencing three pandemics:
one is COVID, one is cancer, and one is mental health.
Those three things can be diagnosed by dogs,
and that ability can be now transferred
to wearable or phone-like devices.
- Les died when he was 65.
As a doctor, he realized what it meant,
so he started thinking about
his earlier signs and symptoms before he was diagnosed.
We spent quite a few days every week writing them down.
He was totally animated by it.
I could see the old Les again.
- Does it feel like you have a superpower?
- Well, a few people have said that.
I call it a gift.
It is smell in my life that makes me quite happy, really.
- I want my kids to grow up in a world
where they don't have to be felled
by completely avoidable dangers.
The fact that we're carrying all this fantastical technology
and it's underleveraged—
I mean, this thing needs to do more for us
than just sell us ads.
It needs to protect our health, and it can.