Owlstone Medical, which uses breath biopsy for applications in early disease detection and precision medicine, has launched a panel to support research into the treatment of respiratory diseases.

The Respiratory Diseases Research Use Only (RUO) Panel is intended to support research to distinguish between types of chronic inflammatory airway disease, including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), as well as to facilitate better therapeutic decision making and monitoring.

The panel consists of a set of biologically relevant Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) that have been linked to inflammatory respiratory diseases and can be easily collected on breath to enable direct characterisation of disease biology in the lungs by non-invasively sampling the airways.

It will initially be introduced for research use only as part of an expanded breath biopsy products and services offering to supplement the breath biopsy OMNI assay.

Additionally, it will be used by pharmaceutical and academic/clinical research clients to support therapeutic development through characterisation of disease endotypes and monitoring response to therapy, as well as to better understand the onset, development and exacerbation of disease.

Billy Boyle, co-founder and CEO at Owlstone Medical, said: “The Respiratory Diseases RUO Panel is the first to be commercially launched by Owlstone Medical and opens an important new phase in the application of breath to address areas of high clinical need.

“Building on our recent announcement on the use of limonene as an EVOC probe in NASH/NAFLD, this panel further validates our strategy of identifying promising biomarkers from multiple sources, including endogenous discovery, EVOC probes, and in-licensing.

“We look forward to making further announcements as our robust test pipeline continues to develop.”