Owlstone Medical secures $6.5 M to develop breath-based diagnostics for infectious disease

UK-based Owlstone Medical has secured funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Owlstone will aim at developing new cost-effective detection technologies for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that could serve as markers of diseases that disproportionately affect the developing world.

The funding is comprised of a $5 million equity investment to advance Owlstone’s Breath Biopsy platform, including expansion of the Breath Biopsy VOC Atlas database and for development of a remote-use real-time breath analyzer.

This component of the funding will be the first time that the foundation has taken an equity position in a breath diagnostics company. Additional $1.5 million in grant funding will be used to develop breath-based diagnostics and identify breath biomarkers for tuberculosis (TB) and HIV, to explore a path by which breath-based testing could be deployed for rapid screening and earlier diagnosis.

The $5 million equity investment will support advancements of the Breath Biopsy platform, For tuberculosis, Owlstone, In partnership with the University of Cape Town, South Africa, Owlstone 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. For HIV, working with investigators from Imperial College, UK, and Oxford University, UK, Owlstone will 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.

Activities complementary to this project are underway with the US Department of Defense (the ‘EXHALE’ project) where Owlstone is developing a handheld device capable of non-invasive detection of pre-symptomatic respiratory infectious disease, providing further support for Owlstone’s ability to advance the foundation’s mission.