Most diagnosis samples nowadays are either from tissue biopsies or blood. Today I would like to share with you a non-invasive sample collection and diagnosis method being developed by a nearly 4-year-old start-up company in Cambridge—Owlstone Medical.
Why can breath be used for diagnosis? Breath contains thousands of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), gaseous molecules that are produced as the end product of metabolic processes within the body or from foods, drugs, or the environment to which the body has been exposed. “Volatile organic compounds are produced throughout the body, and are picked up and distributed in the bloodstream. In your lungs, gases are exchanged between circulating blood and inhaled air. Alongside O2 and CO2, volatile metabolites also pass from the blood into the lungs extremely efficiently. These VOCs are exhaled and provide a source of useful biomarkers directly linked to the body's metabolism.” “It takes roughly 1 minute for blood to flow around the entire circulatory system. By sampling breath for a minute or longer, even very low levels of systemic VOC biomarkers can be pre-concentrated, collected and analyzed.”
“Endogenous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are produced as the end product of metabolic processes within the body, meaning that underlying changes in metabolic activity, including that from your gut microbiome, can produce patterns of VOCs characteristic of specific diseases. As disease has an immediate effect on metabolism, the pattern of VOCs exhaled will change, making Breath Biopsy® an excellent tool with the potential to enable ….disease diagnosis.”
Other than exhaled breath, VOCs can be excreted via metabolite secretions such as urine, sweat, and stool. There have been a few research projects investigating the sensitivity and specificity to detect diseases by VOCs measuring from metabolite secretion other than breath with equipment and technology from Owlstone. Hopefully this can help to expand the application of VOCs as biomarkers for disease diagnosis from different sources of metabolite secretion.
According to Owlstone Medical’s website, research has been done on gaseous metabolites measurement in cancer, inflammatory disease, and infectious disease. Particularly for cancer, the Owlstone Medical focus on the research in early detection when treatments are more effective and thus the chances of survival can be as good at 95%. The company is applying this insight to their research programs in early detection of lung cancer (LuCID), colon cancer (InTERCEPT) and bladder, kidney, stomach, renal and prostate cancers (PAN).
Co-founder and CEO of Owlstone Medical, Billy Boyle, is not a medical professional. He is an engineering graduate from Cambridge University in 2000. A year later, he got a master degree in Engineering. After graduation, Billy worked as a Research Associate in the Microsystems and Nanotech group at Cambridge University. During that period, he and other founders developed a solid state detector (one hundred times smaller and one thousand times cheaper than existing technology) that used micro- and nanofabrication techniques to detect a wide range of airborne or dissolved chemical agents in extremely small quantities.
In 2004, Billy and the others spun out of Cambridge University and established a company, Owlstone Nanotech Inc., selling miniature chemical sensors on a silicon chip which is based on a patented technique called Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometry (FAIMS). The company was initially developed for military applications. It is then grew into a profitable business providing FAIMS technology for a range of military and industrial applications globally.
Billy started to think about the medical applications of FAIMS technology after his wife, Kate, was diagnosed and later died of colon cancer. In March 2016, Billy led the process to spin out Owlstone Medical Ltd and became the founding CEO.
With the help of getting mature technology developed by its mother company, and with the recruitment of team of people covering a wide range of professional areas, Owlstone Medical is a performing well in terms of hardware and software. At the moment, the company is collaborating with different research institutes and National Health Service to collect data and build a holistic database in order to work out the gaseous biomarkers of different diseases.
Please go to the Owlstone Medical website, https://www.owlstonemedical.com, for more information.
Why can breath be used for diagnosis? Breath contains thousands of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), gaseous molecules that are produced as the end product of metabolic processes within the body or from foods, drugs, or the environment to which the body has been exposed. “Volatile organic compounds are produced throughout the body, and are picked up and distributed in the bloodstream. In your lungs, gases are exchanged between circulating blood and inhaled air. Alongside O2 and CO2, volatile metabolites also pass from the blood into the lungs extremely efficiently. These VOCs are exhaled and provide a source of useful biomarkers directly linked to the body's metabolism.” “It takes roughly 1 minute for blood to flow around the entire circulatory system. By sampling breath for a minute or longer, even very low levels of systemic VOC biomarkers can be pre-concentrated, collected and analyzed.”
“Endogenous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are produced as the end product of metabolic processes within the body, meaning that underlying changes in metabolic activity, including that from your gut microbiome, can produce patterns of VOCs characteristic of specific diseases. As disease has an immediate effect on metabolism, the pattern of VOCs exhaled will change, making Breath Biopsy® an excellent tool with the potential to enable ….disease diagnosis.”
Other than exhaled breath, VOCs can be excreted via metabolite secretions such as urine, sweat, and stool. There have been a few research projects investigating the sensitivity and specificity to detect diseases by VOCs measuring from metabolite secretion other than breath with equipment and technology from Owlstone. Hopefully this can help to expand the application of VOCs as biomarkers for disease diagnosis from different sources of metabolite secretion.
According to Owlstone Medical’s website, research has been done on gaseous metabolites measurement in cancer, inflammatory disease, and infectious disease. Particularly for cancer, the Owlstone Medical focus on the research in early detection when treatments are more effective and thus the chances of survival can be as good at 95%. The company is applying this insight to their research programs in early detection of lung cancer (LuCID), colon cancer (InTERCEPT) and bladder, kidney, stomach, renal and prostate cancers (PAN).
Co-founder and CEO of Owlstone Medical, Billy Boyle, is not a medical professional. He is an engineering graduate from Cambridge University in 2000. A year later, he got a master degree in Engineering. After graduation, Billy worked as a Research Associate in the Microsystems and Nanotech group at Cambridge University. During that period, he and other founders developed a solid state detector (one hundred times smaller and one thousand times cheaper than existing technology) that used micro- and nanofabrication techniques to detect a wide range of airborne or dissolved chemical agents in extremely small quantities.
In 2004, Billy and the others spun out of Cambridge University and established a company, Owlstone Nanotech Inc., selling miniature chemical sensors on a silicon chip which is based on a patented technique called Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometry (FAIMS). The company was initially developed for military applications. It is then grew into a profitable business providing FAIMS technology for a range of military and industrial applications globally.
Billy started to think about the medical applications of FAIMS technology after his wife, Kate, was diagnosed and later died of colon cancer. In March 2016, Billy led the process to spin out Owlstone Medical Ltd and became the founding CEO.
With the help of getting mature technology developed by its mother company, and with the recruitment of team of people covering a wide range of professional areas, Owlstone Medical is a performing well in terms of hardware and software. At the moment, the company is collaborating with different research institutes and National Health Service to collect data and build a holistic database in order to work out the gaseous biomarkers of different diseases.
Please go to the Owlstone Medical website, https://www.owlstonemedical.com, for more information.
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