NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Owlstone Medical said today it has signed a service agreement with AstraZeneca to study breath-based biomarkers for asthma and COPD.
Under the terms of the agreement, Owlstone will give AstraZeneca access to its Breath Biopsy Services to help the pharmaceutical company identify breath-based biomarkers as well as classification algorithms for the conditions, with the aim of identifying disease phenotypes and the best treatments for those phenotypes.
Financial and other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"Through our Breath Biopsy Services we are well positioned to assist the AstraZeneca team to explore how Breath Biopsy can identify novel biomarkers for asthma and COPD and to optimize their application in precision medicine," Owlstone Cofounder and CEO Billy Boyle said in a statement.
A spin-out of the larger Owlstone company, Owlstone Medical uses Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometry technology to test patient breath samples for metabolomic biomarkers linked to various disease states. The company is currently developing breath-based tests for the early detection of lung and colorectal cancer.