UK-based respiratory disease diagnostics developer Owlstone Medical has secured $15m in a funding round co-led by Aviva Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of insurance firm Aviva.
The round was co-led by venture capital firm Horizons Ventures and follows an investment of undisclosed size by Aviva in March 2017.
Owlstone Medical is developing an early disease diagnosis breathalyser called Breath Biopsy that is undergoing clinical trials in lung and colorectal cancer. It is also involved in a partnership with charity Cancer Research UK to explore the early diagnosis of eight types of cancer from a patient’s breath.
The company was spun off from Owlstone, itself a chemical detection technology spinout of Cambridge University, in 2016
The breathalyser will also be offered as a precision medicine service to researchers at academic, clinical and pharmaceutical groups. Owlstone will spend the funding on expanding the precision medicine business as it prepares to commercialise its lung cancer test and develop other breathalysers.
Owlstone Medical has now raised a total of $38.5m in funding, including $7m in a July 2016 round led by private investment fund Medtekwiz Advisory.
Aviva medical director Doug Wright said: “Aviva Ventures invests in entrepreneurs with high growth businesses and has identified Owlstone Medical’s technology as being strategically important to our business.
“The expansion of our partnership with them signifies continued confidence in the company and in Breath Biopsy as an entirely new means of early disease detection, screening and treatment monitoring that could make a real difference to people’s health.”