Recent Conference Round Up

Each year we attend a variety of conferences and events, covering a wide range of scientific fields, presenting the exciting progress and results of our ongoing breath research. Many of our recent presentations and posters are available to view online via our resources hub but here we round up the key information from the latest presentations delivered by our team for you.

IASLC (World Conference on Lung Cancer) (9th – 12th September)

Lung cancer causes close to 1.8 million deaths each year, making it the deadliest cancer worldwide (1). When cases are caught quickly, the chance of survival is much greater, with the five-year survival rate at 63% when detected at an early stage, but dropping to only 8.2% in cases where the cancer has spread to other organs (2). At Owlstone Medical, we are investigating the potential of different exhaled volatile organic compounds (VOCs) detected by our Breath Biopsy technology as biomarkers for lung cancer, with the aim to develop this as a screening method for the early detection of the disease.

We presented two posters on our research in this area at IASLC 2023. The first focused on ‘Proof-of-mechanism study for a diagnostic probe compound generating D5-ethanol as an on-breath reporter molecule for lung cancer – Evolution phase 1’, and the other was on ‘The LuCID study: Detection of lung cancer breath biomarkers via Breath Biopsy in a multi-centre trial’.

ERS (9th – 13th September)

The European Respiratory Society (ERS) International Congress is one of the major events for the respiratory research community, bringing together experts from across the field to explore the latest advancements in respiratory medicine and science. At the event, we presented a poster focused on research conducted with McMaster University titled ‘Investigating allergen-induced acute lung inflammation in asthmatic individuals using breath biopsies’. We also presented results from research performed in partnership with the Mayo Clinic in an oral presentation session. A peer reviewed paper on this work, titled ‘Volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath reflect physiological changes in ultramarathon runners’, has recently been published.

BMSS (12th – 14th September)

Owlstone Medical attended the 43rd British Mass Spectrometry Society Annual Meeting which took place in Manchester, UK. We had the opportunity to deliver two talks at the conference, the first of which focused on “Introducing the Breath Biopsy VOC Atlas: identification of breath VOCs with TD-GC-Orbitrap high-resolution accurate mass spectrometry”. Our second talk discussed “High sensitivity detection of deuterium-labelled volatile compounds with Orbitrap-MS: from in-vitro headspace analysis to Breath Biopsy.” Both of these talks are now available to watch on our website via the links above.

ACG (20th – 25th October)

The American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) Annual Meeting is the world’s premier gastrointestinal clinical meeting, bringing together experts from the fields of gastroenterology, hepatology, and endoscopy to explore the latest clinical research and advancements. We presented twice at the event, with our first poster focusing on ‘Dynamic Limonene Breath Testing Maximizes Classification Performance for Subjects With Cirrhosis’, and a second poster on ‘Gut Bacteria Phenotyping Using Dynamic Breath Analysis’.

The Liver Meeting (10th – 14th November)

The Liver Meeting is an exciting event that brings together leading experts in hepatology to discuss the latest advancements in liver treatment and transplantation. Here, we presented a poster focused on ‘Gut Bacteria Phenotyping Using Dynamic Breath Analysis’. The research investigated the feasibility of quantification in breath of several gut-derived metabolites that may exacerbate diseases such as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

Our annual Breath Biopsy Conference is taking place on 5th and 6th November 2024. If you would like to attend or even present your research to a cohort of breath researchers, visit the conference webpages. To find out more about upcoming events being attended by Owlstone Medical and catch up on the full range of conferences that we have attended, visit our events pages.

References

1. Ferlay J, Colombet M, Soerjomataram I, Parkin DM, Piñeros M, Znaor A, et al. Cancer statistics for the year 2020: An overview. Int J Cancer. 2021;149(4):778–89.

2. SEER*Explorer Application [Internet]. [cited 2023 Dec 17]. Available online.