Billy Boyle, speaks to Science with a Twist

Published on: 30 Mar 2021

Ron O’Brien, a Senior Director at Thermo Fisher Scientific, recently sat down with our CEO, Billy Boyle on popular science podcast ‘Science with a Twist’, to talk about Owlstone Medical’s cutting edge technology and its broad range of applications, including early detection and precision medicine.

During the conversation, Billy shares what has inspired him to pursue a career in Bioengineering and develop Owlstone Medicals’ technology and discussed some of the difficulties he’s encountered along the way – from the perceived problems with the current sample matrices, to the challenges of identification and validation of biomarkers. Enhanced biomarker discovery would not have progressed without the community of breath researchers, within both academia and pharmaceuticals, who are integrating our technology and working towards providing non-invasive screening for a variety of diseases.

Go to the podcast

The podcast covers three key areas where Breath Biopsy® technology can be integrated to help tackle medical challenges globally:

Early detection forms a substantial basis of Owlstone Medical’s mission to save 100,000 lives. Breath Biopsy has the potential to detect early-stage signs of disease. Lung Cancer and Liver Disease are too examples of diseases that would hugely benefit from earlier detection and intervention and where a vast amount of research is already being conducted.

Breath Biopsy can also enhance the understanding the inflammatory subtypes of respiratory diseases to better tailor medication to an individual patient’s needs. For many respiratory diseases, such as Asthma or COPD, current therapeutics are often prescribed on a trial-and-error basis. Applying precision medicine in these areas would improve patients outcomes while also saving time and money.

There is also the option to employ endogenous volatile organic compound (EVOC®) Probes to target specific metabolic pathways as part of diagnosis and treatment, in areas like monitoring gastrointestinal health.

Check out the full 16 minute podcast to hear how Breath Biopsy can be integrated into your research:

Billy-Podcast-Thermo-Website

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