Keynote

Kate Webb

APOPO

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Saving lives one sniff at a time! African giant pouched rats as humanitarian biosensors

For the past twenty one years, APOPO, a global non-profit organization with Belgian roots, has trained African giant pouched rats (Cricetomys ansorgei) to save lives. The rats, affectionally dubbed ‘HeroRATs', detect buried landmines in post-conflict zones in Africa and Southeast Asia. To date, they have found over 100,000 explosive remnants and cleared more than 23 million square meters of land that has been safely returned to local communities. The HeroRATs also help combat the world’s deadliest infectious disease, tuberculosis (TB), by re-screening human sputum samples originally collected and tested with traditional diagnostic methods at local health clin- ics. By sniffing out the TB-causing bacteria in the samples, the rats act as a ‘failsafe. Any rat-suspect samples are rechecked using WHO endorsed methods and if TB is confirmed, APOPO notifies the clinic. In this way APOPO and the HeroRATs have found approximately 15,000 cases of TB that were otherwise missed by the local clinics.

In addition to training rats for operational deployment, APOPO’s Innovation relies on multi-faceted research to inform and optimize current training procedures and develop novel scent-detection applications. Recently, our team collaborated with the Endangered Wildlife Trust of South Africa to explore if the HeroRATs can be trained to help combat illegal wildlife trade. As proof-of-principle, we trained rats to detect the odor of pangolin (the world’s most heavily smuggled mammal) and African hardwood (falling victim to illegal logging). Importantly, the rats were able to find these targets even when they were hidden among other stinky substances commonly used to mask the smell of smuggled wildlife products. Future steps of this project will identify a suitable working environment and as- sess operational feasibility in terms of how much wildlife product must be present for the rats to find it. The HeroRATs’ impressive ol- factory abilities, cost-effectiveness, relatively long lifespan, and flexibility to work with multiple handlers in diverse environments, uniquely position them as biosensors with potentially limitless humanitarian benefits.