Rachel Klemovitch, Assistant Editor04.26.24
Owlstone Medical, the global leader in Breath Biopsy for early disease detection and precision medicine, has secured funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Funding consists of a $5 million equity investment to advance Owlstone’s Breath Biopsy platform and $1.5 million in grant funding to develop breath-based diagnostics and identify breath biomarkers for tuberculosis (TB) and HIV.
Funding will support two Owlstone projects in developing new cost-effective detection technologies for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that could serve as markers of diseases. One project is focused on identifying TB and the other on HIV.
The TB project is in collaboration with the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and aims to identify a panel of on-breath candidate VOC biomarkers that differentiate TB subjects from healthy controls and to develop breath diagnostic approaches based on exploiting the metabolic features of TB using in vitro approaches.
In the HIV project, Owlstone is working with investigators from Imperial College, UK, and Oxford University, UK, to analyze VOCs from blood samples from subjects with HIV and will work to identify a panel of on-breath candidate VOC biomarkers that correlate with HIV viral load.
Billy Boyle, co-founder and CEO at Owlstone Medical, said: “Early diagnosis is a critical determinant of health outcomes. By enabling swift and non-invasive detection of disease, breath analysis has the potential to save lives and dramatically reduce the burden of illness in resource-constrained settings. This investment by the Gates Foundation is a testament to how Owlstone is uniquely positioned to transform infectious disease diagnosis through our Breath Biopsy platform. The funds will accelerate both the discovery and validation of VOC biomarkers, and the development of a fieldable, low cost, simple to use device.”
The $5 million equity investment will go towards advancing the Breath Biopsy platform, including the expansion of the Breath Biopsy VOC Atlas [1] database and for development of a remote-use real-time breath analyzer.
Resources:
1. https://www.owlstonemedical.com/science-technology/breath-biopsy-voc-atlas/
Funding will support two Owlstone projects in developing new cost-effective detection technologies for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that could serve as markers of diseases. One project is focused on identifying TB and the other on HIV.
The TB project is in collaboration with the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and aims to identify a panel of on-breath candidate VOC biomarkers that differentiate TB subjects from healthy controls and to develop breath diagnostic approaches based on exploiting the metabolic features of TB using in vitro approaches.
In the HIV project, Owlstone is working with investigators from Imperial College, UK, and Oxford University, UK, to analyze VOCs from blood samples from subjects with HIV and will work to identify a panel of on-breath candidate VOC biomarkers that correlate with HIV viral load.
Billy Boyle, co-founder and CEO at Owlstone Medical, said: “Early diagnosis is a critical determinant of health outcomes. By enabling swift and non-invasive detection of disease, breath analysis has the potential to save lives and dramatically reduce the burden of illness in resource-constrained settings. This investment by the Gates Foundation is a testament to how Owlstone is uniquely positioned to transform infectious disease diagnosis through our Breath Biopsy platform. The funds will accelerate both the discovery and validation of VOC biomarkers, and the development of a fieldable, low cost, simple to use device.”
The $5 million equity investment will go towards advancing the Breath Biopsy platform, including the expansion of the Breath Biopsy VOC Atlas [1] database and for development of a remote-use real-time breath analyzer.
Resources:
1. https://www.owlstonemedical.com/science-technology/breath-biopsy-voc-atlas/