HEALTH SPECIAL
Owlstone Medical Owlstone is on a mission to save 100,000 lives, and given the company’s, er, breathtaking progress in recent years, few would bet against the Cambridge diagnostic pioneer achieving this noble ambition. Based at the Science Park, Owlstone is the firm behind Breath Biopsy, a platform that operates by detecting and analysing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found on breath. Changes in these VOCs can indicate the presence of a number of different diseases including cancer, so a simple breath test could quite literally save your life. “Breath Biopsy is perfectly suited to address two of the major challenges of health care today: early detection and precision medicine,” Owlstone’s director of investor relations, Chris Claxton, tells Cambridge Catalyst . “For many diseases, the key determining factor in how successful treatment is likely to be is how early in its development the disease is identified. Metabolic changes occur at the very earliest stages of disease, which means the byproducts of this changed metabolism, when volatile, can be detected on breath, potentially well before other physical symptoms have become apparent. “For precision medicine, because Breath Biopsy directly accesses the underlying molecular mechanisms of disease, it has the potential to provide researchers with critical insights on the onset and development of disease, and to help pharmaceutical companies better understand the mechanism of action of their drugs in development
Breath Biopsy has the potential to provide researchers with critical insights on the onset and development of disease, and to help pharmaceutical companies"
and to help stratify patients and guide decisions on dosing,” Chris explains. The Breath Biopsy was born out of the personal tragedy that struck Owlstone co-founder and chief executive Billy Boyle in 2012, when his wife Kate died of colon cancer. She wasn’t diagnosed until the disease had reached an advanced stage, and since then Billy and his firm have been dedicated to developing technology to ensure other patients don’t suffer the same fate. Owlstone’s ReCIVA breath sampling device won the MacRobert Award, the top prize in UK engineering, in 2018. No wonder then, that the company has proved popular with
ABOVE Owlstone Medical’s ReCIVA is a breath sampling device that can detect the presence of different diseases, including cancer
investors, raking in over $73m in the last three years. With its products still in development, Chris says Owlstone Medical has plenty to keep it busy in the near future. He says: “We are focused on continuing to deliver on all fronts for the business: building deeper ties with current and new pharmaceutical and major academic customers in the UK, US and around the world; driving our clinical trials towards reporting milestones; and developing tests, including for drug metabolism measuring using EVOC probes and environmental exposure monitoring to be launched in the near-term.” owlstonemedical.com
15
ISSUE 03
cambridgecatalyst.co.uk
Powered by FlippingBook