Six years ago, Nancy Best never thought she would be a victim of breast cancer.

The owner of a California bakery, Best would retreat to her Garberville home tired but happy after her early morning shifts. It was during an after-work nap that she received the first sign that something was wrong.

Best's 8-month-old yellow Labrador retriever, Mia, came up to her on the couch and buried her nose into Best's right breast. Thinking that Mia probably smelled food from the bakery, Best didn't think much of the incident until the puppy pounced on her lap and nosed three more times in the same place as before - and the third time, it hurt. Best discovered what felt like a "two-day-old marshmallow" in the spot and went in for an exam. The doctor confirmed that she had a cancerous lump in her right breast - in exactly the spot where Mia dug her nose.

Best, who said her "whole life came to a standstill" at the diagnosis, is convinced that Mia saved her life.

"Not everyone believes my story," she said in a phone interview. "But the fact is that the doctors said that if I had come in even six months later, it would have been too late."

Best's story sounded far-fetched to some people she told it to, but many are starting to take stories like hers seriously. So much so, in fact, that a research foundation in California recently devoted a project to discovering if dogs have the capability to smell diseases like cancer.

Scientists at the Pine Street Foundation in San Francisco recently completed an experiment where they trained five dogs to identify breath samples of patients with different forms of cancer. When detecting samples of lung cancer, the dogs had a 99 percent accuracy rate, and when looking for breast cancer, the success rate was 88 percent. The study has given the researchers hope that some forms of cancer may emit detectable chemicals that could aid in early detection.

"If dogs can detect cancer early, we wanted to investigate it," said Nicholas Broffman, executive director of the Pine Street Foundation. "If you get time, you get hope."

In the study, three Labrador retrievers and two Portuguese water dogs were given five breath samples with one containing cancer cells. The dogs were trained to sniff each one and sit down next to the cancer sample. The study was double blind, with no indications given to the dogs or the researchers about which sample was which. Each dog performed in nearly 100 trials.

The dogs, which were volunteered for the study by local owners and programs such as Guide Dogs for the Blind, reported performances that weren't affected by disease stage of cancer patients, the age of the patient, whether the patient was a smoker or the patient's most recently eaten meal, according to the study results.

The foundation plans to continue its research in hopes of developing an electronic device with odor-detecting abilities comparable to those of dogs' for use in clinical practices.

"The dog's brain and nose is currently one of the most sophisticated odor detection devices on the planet," the study says. "Diagnostic breath analysis deserves further rigorous study ... toward the development of an 'electronic nose.'"

If researchers can detect precisely what it is that the dogs in the study were identifying in the cancer samples, they might also be able to use the research for early detection of other cancers, such as pancreatic and ovarian cancer, Broffman said.

"[Dogs] can detect in parts per trillion," he said, comparing the measurement to detecting one second in 320 centuries. "The next question is, can technology rise to the challenge?"

Broffman said the study does need to be replicated and dog owners should not, at this point, rely on their pets to detect cancer for them. He still recommends getting medical verification about such diseases.

BYU is also working to combat the effects of cancer. The University Cancer Research Center is currently working on developing new chemotherapy treatments that will help override the tendency of tumors to become resistant to therapeutic drugs, according to Daniel Simmons, director of the center.

"We're working on compounds to close that door so that drugs can't get out of the cell," said Simmons, who is also a BYU professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

The canine study hit headlines on the heels of a review recently released by the National Center for Health Statistics. The center reported that for the first time since 1930, the number of cancer deaths in America dropped in 2003, down 6.6 percent from 2002. The news comes as a ray of hope for many Americans, as statistics say that approximately 1.3 million new cancer cases will be diagnosed in 2006, according to the Salt Lake City's Huntsman Cancer Institute's Web site.

(For comments, e-mail Elizabeth Kasper at elizabeth.kasper@byu.edu)