NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Owlstone Medical today announced it has raised $15 million for the commercialization of its breath-based diagnostic technology.
The financing was led co-led by Horizon Ventures, and Aviva Ventures, and includes follow-on investments from other existing backers of Owlstone, the Cambridge, UK-based company said. The funding will allow it to bring its test called Breath Biopsy to market, continue ongoing trials for the technology across multiple cancers, and further grow its precision medicine services to the drug development industry.
Breath Biopsy is currently being evaluated in clinical trials for lung and colorectal cancer, and is being used in the PAN cancer trial in collaboration with Cancer Research UK, which is researching the early detection of eight cancer types in breath. In November, Owlstone said that GSK will use the test in a clinical development program evaluating the efficacy of a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease drug candidate.
Owlstone's test is based on field asymmetric ion mobility spectrometer microchip-based technology, which was then adapted to a "breathalyzer" platform designed to measure specific volatile organic compounds, or chemical biomarkers, in breath to indicate the presence of a particular disease or cancer. The company received an investment from Aviva a year ago, and in January 2017 it raised $11.6 million.