Cancer breath test to speed up diagnosis
Published on: 4 Sep 2018, under Breath Biopsy
The Times reports on Breath Biopsy®‘s potential to improve early detection of disease, with reference to the ongoing LuCID, InTERCEPT and PAN cancer trials using Owlstone Medical®‘s Breath Biopsy platform.
Taking bowel cancer as an example, diagnosis at stage 4 leads to a 5 year survival rate of around 5%. However, early detection at stage 1 has a dramatic effect, raising bowel cancer survival to around 95%.1
Owlstone Medical’s aim is to improve early detection of diseases like cancer by developing breath tests using our Breath Biopsy platform.
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Article Extracts:
Breath tests to detect cancer that experts hope will speed up diagnosis are being assessed in large-scale trials.
A series of small-scale studies have demonstrated that it is possible to pick up compounds in breath that indicate the presence of potentially deadly tumours. At least three larger trials are now under way in the hope that the technology will one day be routine in GP surgeries.
Breathalysers for cancers of the lung, bowel, gullet and stomach are being tested, and researchers will look for tumours of the pancreas, prostate and bladder in research part-funded by the government.
Robert Rintoul, of Royal Papworth Hospital, is running the trial at 26 sites across Europe. He said: “I am very excited about this work. We don’t have a good technique for identifying early-stage lung cancer. We hope we will be able to detect cancers with more specificity and more sensitivity than previous tests and the new breath collection mask and microchip are at the heart of this.”
Dr Rintoul said that a test that could accurately spot cancer without many false positives was “the holy grail of cancer diagnostics. Although there have been other breath tests trialled, we hope this new technology will be more sensitive and accurate for detecting early-stage disease.“
Breath Biopsy®
If you want to learn more about how Owlstone Medical’s Breath Sampling and Analysis technology and Services could be utilized in early detection and precision medicine, why not download our free ebook: Breath Biopsy: The Complete Guide?
