Cambridge-based Owlstone Medical has developed a microchip sensor technology to measure the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in patients' exhaled breath. Breath testing is already a recognized method for linking specific VOCs in exhaled breath to a certain medical conditions, but current techniques are often expensive, slow and complex to use.
Co-founder and CEO of Owlstone Medical Billy Boyle said their device is much smaller and cheaper than existing technologies; potentially making it a viable tool for doctor's surgeries.
"Historically chemical analyzers take up half the size of a room and cost half a million dollars. So what we've been able to do is use microchip technology to shrink it down from these massive devices to something about the size of a button. And once it's in that form factor, you can build it directly into these disease breathalyser technologies," Boyle told Reuters.
Boyle said their sensors were originally developed for detecting explosives and toxic gases but were re-programmed to identify the chemical markers of diseases, with a lung cancer breathalyser the first to reach clinical trial.
Lung cancer kills about 1.5 million people a year, according to the World Health Organization, and is the leading cause of cancer death across the world. Only about 10 percent of patients live more than 5 years, in part because the disease is usually diagnosed too late.
However, the chemical markers of lung cancer are present even in the earliest stage of the disease. Owlstone Medical says their breathalyser can pick out these minute traces of cancer, meaning current treatments can be administered with a much greater chance of successfully curing the disease.
