Owlstone medical enters collaboration to advance early disease detection using non-invasive breath biopsy

Owlstone Medical has announced its partnership with Thermo Fisher Scientific to seek to advance the application of non-invasive breath sampling to address the challenges of the early detection of disease and the precision medicine delivery of healthcare through the discovery and validation of novel biomarkers.

Under the agreement, both parties will work to integrate the Thermo Scientific™ Q Exactive™ GC Hybrid Quadrupole-Orbitrap™ Mass Spectrometer into Owlstone Medical’s Breath Biopsy^® platform. An initial project will seek to qualify the mass analyzer for the detection of new biomarkers via a validated discovery and routine analysis project. Upon successful completion, the technology will then become a standard part of Owlstone Medical’s biomarker discovery process, whereby metabolomic studies are conducted on breath samples for internal programs, or on behalf of pharmaceutical or academic clients, to discover novel biomarkers that could translate into research and clinical tests. The work will take place at Owlstone Medical’s Cambridge, UK, Breath Biopsy^® laboratory.

“There is clearly a growing need for non-invasive diagnostic solutions to support the early detection of disease.” said Morten Bern, senior director marketing, chromatography and mass spectrometry, Thermo Fisher Scientific. “The integration of our Orbitrap GC-MS technology with Owlstone Medical’s Breath Biopsy^® platform provides a unique basis to improve patient outcomes through the discovery of breath biomarkers and their incorporation into clinical practice.”

Billy Boyle, co-founder, and CEO at Owlstone Medical said: “The GC Orbitrap platform’s ability to detect a wide range of chemicals during both targeted and untargeted analyses without losing selectivity or sensitivity, promises to be of substantial benefit to our Breath Biopsy^® platform. With a large and rapidly expanding installed base of GC Orbitrap systems, our partnership with Thermo Fisher Scientific represents an exciting opportunity for cross-promotion of the platform and technique, by which the benefits of Breath Biopsy^® can be broadly realized.”

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