Owlstone Medical, a Cambridge, UK-based company which specialises in Breath Biopsy® for applications in early disease detection and precision medicine, raised $6.5M in funding.
The round was comprised of a $5M equity investment to advance Owlstone’s Breath Biopsy platform and $1.5M in grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop breath-based diagnostics and identify breath biomarkers for tuberculosis (TB) and HIV.
The $5M equity investment will support advancements of the 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.
The $1.5M in grant funding to support the identification of breath biomarkers will be used across two projects:
- tuberculosis (TB): 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.
- 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.
In both areas, the data collected will also be used to further populate Owlstone’s Breath Biopsy VOC Atlas.
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.
Led by Billy Boyle, co-founder and CEO, Owlstone Medical is interested in developing new cost-effective detection technologies for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that could serve as markers of diseases that disproportionately affect the developing world.
FinSMEs
25/04/2024