Millionaire scent boss with a nose so sensitive it can sniff out cancer
AS the founder of a multimillion-pound perfume empire, Jo Malone definitely has a nose for business.
But now the fragrant entrepreneur has discovered that her smelling ability may be capable of much more than creating the latest scent.
For she has had her scent detection ranked on a par with highlyskilled dogs trained to identify illnesses such as cancer.
After undergoing tests at the Medical Detection Dogs centre, Miss Malone – who battled with breast cancer herself in 2003 – discovered she could identify disease by smelling subtle changes in chemicals way beyond most humans’ capability.
Speaking at the Festival of Literature in Dubai, she said: ‘I passed the test so that made me see my sense of smell in a completely different way. It literally changed my world. It is the most amazing place.’
During the tests, Miss Malone, 53, was given five pots and asked to identify the one containing tiny doses of amyl acetate, which was diluted in mineral oil.
She was able to spot when the chemical, which is used as a control, was present in one part in 100,000 and even when it was present in one part in one million.
According to the centre, most humans are unable to identify the chemical when it is present in one part in 1,000.
Claire Guest, co-founder of the charity, said the businesswoman had performed better than any other human who had taken the test. She said: ‘I knew she would do better than the average because she has got a very highly tuned sense of smell but we were still amazed at how well she did. I have never seen that with humans before.’
However, the perfumer has some way to go until she can beat the best dogs at the centre – who can spot one part per trillion, equivalent to a teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Having grown up in a council house in Kent, Miss Malone, who is dyslexic, left school at 13 to care for her mother who had suffered a stroke.
She founded her eponymous firm, Jo Malone London, in 1983, and in 1999, she sold it to Estee
‘Better than any other human’
Lauder for ‘undisclosed millions’.
The brand of perfumes, candles and bath oils are now sold in department stores around the world.
Miss Malone’s success may owe a lot to the fact she has synaesthesia, a neurological condition in which the senses overlap, meaning she interprets sound and colour as smell.
‘When I see white and purple, for example, I smell eucalyptus and blackcurrant,’ she said. ‘I will listen to jazz and interpret it through smell. I am not physically smelling it but through my imagination.’
But, while she was undergoing chemotherapy for her breast cancer, the mother-of-one lost her sense of smell. Luckily, her nose has since recovered, to the extent that she has claimed she could tell that her husband was ill, simply because he smelt different.
She has previously said she kept sniffing his neck, explaining: ‘There was a strip of skin on the right side that just seemed different. I just could not put my finger on it.’
But Miss Malone said she had not realised just how refined her skills were until she visited the centre in January.
The organisation, based in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, also trains medical alert assistance dogs, which help people with life-threatening conditions such as diabetes, epilepsy and heart problems. Some are trained to recognise Addison’s disease, the same adrenal gland condition Miss Malone’s husband suffered from, which could explain why she was able to spot changes in his odour.
Scientists at the centre are now trying to work out how reliably dogs can detect the likes of breast, lung and prostate cancers.
The researchers are working with Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust on a threeyear clinical trial to discover whether prostate cancer can be detected from urine samples.
And scientists at Edinburgh University have previously tested another woman, Joy Milne from Perth, who was found to have an incredible ability to sniff out Parkinson’s disease.