Owlstone Medical (“Owlstone”), the world leader in Breath Biopsy® for applications in early disease detection and precision medicine, announced today that it has secured funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (“the Gates Foundation” or “the Foundation”).
The 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 .
Owlstone, with foundation support, 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. With the new funding, Owlstone seeks to understand whether this approach is suitable for TB and HIV detection and to explore a pathway through which breath-based testing could be implemented for rapid screening and early diagnosis.
Early diagnosis is a critical determinant of health outcomes. By enabling rapid and non-invasive detection of disease, breath analysis has the potential to save lives and dramatically reduce the burden of disease in resource-constrained settings. This investment from the Gates Foundation is a testament to how Owlstone is uniquely positioned to transform infectious disease diagnostics through its Breath Biopsy platform. The funds will accelerate both the discovery and validation of VOC biomarkers and the development of a low-cost, simple-to-use, implantable device.”
Billy Boyle, co-founder and CEO of Owlstone Medical;
The $5 million equity investment will support developments of the Breath Biopsy platform, including the expansion of the Breath Biopsy VOC Atlas1 database and to develop a remote real-time breath analyzer. This funding item will be the first time the foundation has taken an equity position in a breath diagnostics company.
The $1.5 million grant to support the identification of breath biomarkers will be used in two projects:
- Tuberculosis: In collaboration with the University of Cape Town, South Africa, Owlstone aims to identify a panel of candidate breath VOC biomarkers that differentiate TB subjects from healthy controls and develop breath diagnostic approaches based on exploiting metabolic characteristics of tuberculosis using in vitro approaches.
- HIV: In collaboration with researchers from the UK’s Imperial College and the UK’s University of Oxford, Owlstone will analyze VOCs from blood samples from people with HIV and work to identify a panel of candidate breath VOC biomarkers that correlate with HIV viral load.
The data collected will also be used to further complement Owlstone’s Breath Biopsy VOC Atlas in both areas.
