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A Japanese centre which says it has trained a dog to sniff out human cancer cells is cloning the animal in South Korea, a Seoul bio-technology company and the dog's owner said on Wednesday.

Cloned foetuses from the black labrador retriever named Marine were in April implanted into a surrogate mother dog, said Ra Jeong-Chan, president of RNL Bio.

"We are going to see the clones around the end of May," Ra said.

Marine, who is six and half years old, lost her ability to reproduce when she had her womb removed because of disease.

She is owned by Yuji Satoh, a head trainer at St Sugar Cancer Sniffing Dog Training Centre located at Shirahama in Chiba prefecture.
Satoh said in Japan that experts from Seoul National University, which created the world's first cloned dog in 2005, had taken some skin samples from Marine and brought them back to South Korea for the project.

"We are making clones of Marine. She is touted as having a world top cancer-sniffing ability. By making her clones, we want to promote studies into cancer-sniffing dogs," Satoh said.
He and the Korean firm, which is co-ordinating the project, have agreed to produce two clones and train them at Satoh's centre.

One will then be brought back to South Korea for study at the university and the other will stay at the centre.

If the project for two pups succeeds, they plan to produce more.
Researchers in several countries are investigating whether dogs have the ability to detect lung, breast, prostate and skin cancer at an early and treatable stage.

They believe cancer cells create a scent not present in healthy cells, which can theoretically be picked up by dogs in breath or urine samples.