Owlstone Medical Ltd, a diagnostics company, has been spun out of parent company, Owlstone Inc., to develop and commercialize a breathalyzer for use in clinical diagnostics and precision medicine with applications in cancer, inflammatory and infectious disease.
Based in Cambridge, U.K., the company announced that it has successfully raised £4.9 million ($6.5 million) financing. The investment round was led by Medtekwiz Advisory Ltd and will be used to fund ongoing clinical trials of the breathalyzer in lung and colon cancer screening.
George Hanna, director of the National Institute of Health’s Research Diagnostic Evidence Cooperative London and ReCIVA breath sampler, a system currently being used as part of Owlstone’s LuCID lung cancer detection project. (Credit: Owlstone Medical Ltd)
Owlstone Medical was created to leverage proprietary Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometry (FAIMS) technology for the advancement of a disease breathalyzer. FAIMS measures volatile organic compound (VOCs) metabolites in patient’s breath or bodily fluids which are specific to disease.
Measurement of VOC biomarkers allows diagnosis of disease at a very early stage, to enable more effective treatment and better patient outcomes.
In February, Owlstone Medical won a National Health Service (NHS) contract for STRATA, adapting its disease breathalyzer technology for precision medicine and companion diagnostics and prior to that, it was awarded a £1 million ($1.3 million) NHS contract for Lung Cancer Indicator Detection (LuCID) to use FAIMS technology in the early detection of lung cancer.
(Note: Exchange rate at press time £1 = $1.33)
