Owlstone Medical secures $6.5M funding for Breath Biopsy®
Owlstone Medical, a Cambridge, UK-based company specializing in Breath Biopsy® for applications in early disease detection and precision medicine, recently announced a successful funding round totaling $6.5M. The funding comprised a $5M equity investment aimed at advancing Owlstone’s Breath Biopsy platform and a $1.5M grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant is specifically focused on developing breath-based diagnostics and identifying breath biomarkers for tuberculosis (TB) and HIV.
The $5M equity investment will be used to support the development of the Breath Biopsy platform, including expanding the Breath Biopsy VOC Atlas database and creating a remote-use real-time breath analyzer.
It is noteworthy that this investment marks the first time the foundation has taken an equity position in a breath diagnostics company. The $1.5M grant funding will be allocated to two projects - one focusing on tuberculosis and the other on HIV.
The tuberculosis project will see Owlstone collaborating with the University of Cape Town in South Africa to identify VOC biomarker candidates that differentiate TB subjects from healthy controls. In the HIV project, Owlstone will work alongside researchers from Imperial College and Oxford University to identify VOC biomarkers correlating with HIV viral load. Additionally, data collected from both projects will contribute to further enhancing Owlstone’s Breath Biopsy VOC Atlas. The company is also engaged in complementary activities with the US Department of Defense to develop a handheld device for detecting pre-symptomatic respiratory infectious diseases.
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