Owlstone Medical in Cambridge, England, has announced a $6.5 million commitment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support development of breath-based diagnostics for infectious diseases that disproportionately affect the developing world.

The funding includes a $5 million equity investment to advance the Breath Biopsy platform, including expansion of the volatile organic compounds (VOC) Atlas1 database, and to develop a remote-use real-time breath analyzer. In addition, a $1.5 million grant will support the identification of breath biomarkers, which will be used to identify a panel of on-breath candidate VOC biomarkers that differentiate tuberculosis (TB) subjects from healthy controls and to develop breath diagnostic approaches based on exploiting the metabolic features of TB in partnership with University of Cape Town in South Africa. The biomarkers will also be used to analyze VOCs from blood samples of subjects with HIV and to identify a panel of on-breath candidate VOC biomarkers that correlate with HIV viral load in partnership with Imperial College and Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

“Early diagnosis is a critical determinant of health outcomes,” said Owlstone Medical co-founder and CEO Billy Boyle. “By enabling swift and non-invasive detection of disease, breath analysis has the potential to save lives and dramatically reduce the burden of illness in resource-constrained settings. This investment by the Gates Foundation is testament to how Owlstone is uniquely positioned to transform infectious disease diagnosis through our Breath Biopsy platform. The funds will accelerate both the discovery and validation of VOC biomarkers, and the development of a fieldable, low-cost, simple-to-use device.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Andrey Popov)