Owlstone Medical provides Breath Biopsy Services to AstraZeneca to study disease drivers in Asthma and COPD
Breath Biopsy offers a rapid, non-invasive approach to identify breath-based biomarkers that could help to stratify and monitor patients so that they receive the right therapy at the optimum dosage.
Published on: 9 Apr 2018
Collaboration will explore use of Breath Biopsy to identify novel biomarkers to enable personalized medicine applications
Cambridge, UK, April 9, 2018: Owlstone Medical, a diagnostics company developing a breathalyzer for disease, today announced it has signed a service agreement with AstraZeneca plc (LON: AZN), a global biopharmaceutical company. The collaboration will explore how breath can be used to identify novel biomarkers to help differentiate between disease phenotypes relevant for asthma and COPD.
Owlstone Medical will provide AstraZeneca with access to its Breath Biopsy Services including development of classification algorithms to identify breath biomarkers for precision medicine applications across asthma and COPD. By identifying disease phenotypes and treatable traits, the underlying heterogeneity of obstructive lung diseases can be explored, with the potential to enable the right treatment to be given to the right patient at the right time. Breath Biopsy offers a rapid, non-invasive approach to identify breath-based biomarkers that could help to stratify and monitor patients so that they receive the right therapy at the optimum dosage.
Chronic respiratory disease, including asthma and COPD, is a substantial heath and economic burden globally often causing reduced quality of life and premature death for sufferers. An estimated 334 million people worldwide have asthma1 and 251 million suffer from COPD2.
Billy Boyle, co-founder and CEO at Owlstone Medical, said: “This agreement with AstraZeneca demonstrates our unrivalled expertise in breath biomarkers. Through our Breath Biopsy Services we are well positioned to assist the AstraZeneca team to explore how Breath Biopsy can identify novel biomarkers for asthma and COPD and to optimize their application in precision medicine.”
To find out more about Owlstone Medical visit: www.owlstonemedical.com
1. The Global Asthma Report, (2014). www.globalasthmareport.org/burden/burden.php
2. WHO: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) Factsheet (November 2017), www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs315/en/
ENDS
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About Owlstone Medical
Owlstone Medical has developed a unique breathalyzer for disease. The company’s vision is to become the global leader in non-invasive breath tests for early disease detection and precision medicine across cancer, inflammatory disease and infectious disease with the aim of saving 100,000 lives and $1.5 billion in healthcare costs.
Owlstone Medical’s Breath Biopsy® platform is creating a new industry category, based on the routine detection and analysis of volatile organic compound (VOC) biomarkers in breath, which has the potential to revolutionize healthcare. The award winning ReCIVA Breath Sampler is the first standardized breath collection device designed to capture the VOC biomarkers present in breath, which are then analyzed using Owlstone Medical’s Breath Biopsy services and products.
Owlstone Medical is developing breath tests for the early detection of lung and colorectal cancer. These are two of the most common cancer killers worldwide and represent multibillion dollar market opportunities. The company has an active clinical diagnostics/screening pipeline including the world’s largest breath-based clinical trials. The Breath Biopsy platform is also being deployed in the PAN cancer trial, a collaboration with Cancer Research UK studying the early detection of eight different cancer types in breath.
The company also sees a significant role for Breath Biopsy in precision medicine, where it can provide dynamic information about a patient’s disease activity and identify patients most likely to respond to a particular therapy. Breath Biopsy aims to ensure that the right therapy is given to the right patient at the right time, helping to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs.
Owlstone Medical’s Breath Biopsy clinical laboratory is a unique, revenue generating capability that allows pharmaceutical, clinical and academic partners worldwide to explore breath-based biomarkers to optimize their own precision medicine activities. The commercialization of Breath Biopsy precision medicine companion diagnostics through pharmaceutical partners is expected to provide Owlstone Medical with a significant royalty stream as breath-based precision medicine becomes a reality.
Owlstone Medical was spun out of Owlstone Inc. in 2016 to develop and commercialize medical applications of its proprietary microchip chemical sensing technology, Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometry (FAIMS), which is sold in the military and industrial sectors globally. The company has raised a total of $38.5 million in equity financing, and is backed by technology investor Horizons Ventures, and Aviva, a leading healthcare insurer.
Owlstone Medical is headquartered in Cambridge, UK.
Breath Biopsy® for Respiratory Diseases
If you want to learn more about how Owlstone Medical’s Breath Sampling and Analysis technology and Services can be utilized in respiratory disease diagnosis, monitoring and precision medicine, why not watch our on demand webinar – Breath Biopsy for Precision Medicine in Respiratory Diseases, or download our free ebook – Breath Biopsy: The Complete Guide?
