University involved in project to help children with asthma

Owlstone Medical, a diagnostics company, has announced it has developed and received CE mark approval for a paediatric version of the company’s disease breathalyzer, ReCIVA™, which is now being used in EMBER (the East Midlands Breathomics Pathology Node).

The marking extends the scope of breath testing in early stage diagnostics and therapy response to include children and in particular, the difficult to manage group of child asthma patients.

Both the adult and paediatric versions of the breathalyzer are being used by EMBER, a £2.5 million project, funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The primary aim of EMBER is to develop breath-based systems for molecular pathology of disease and clinically validate breathomics as a new diagnostic modality.

EMBER was established by the MRC and EPSRC as an academia/industry consortium to develop breath-based systems for molecular pathology. EMBER draws upon expertise in clinical research, analytical chemistry, data management and mathematical modelling of complex data across the East Midlands to develop rapid, near patient non-invasive approaches to diagnosis, phenotyping and stratification.

Professor Chris Brightling, EMBER and Leicester NIHR Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit Director, Professor in Respiratory Medicine at our University with Precision Medicine Institute added: “Choosing the right treatment for the right patient is especially challenging in children as obtaining samples such as blood to measure disease activity can be difficult. Breath analysis offers an excellent opportunity to sample the airway by simply breathing into a mask. This presents a new approach to understand disease and make better treatment decisions”.

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