‘Breathe into this bag, sir, if you don’t mind.’ We all know what that means, but one day such words might not come from the local bobby but from your doctor. ‘Breathe into this tube, if you don’t mind, sir. And I will tell you if you have tuberculosis, asthma, lung cancer – and much more besides.’
Breath diagnostics is one of the great white hopes of medical research, and is one of the reasons why just before Christmas AIM-listed Avacta Group (the subject of a previous Penny Sleuth, September 2007) acquired Oxford Medical Diagnostics. Avacta, you may recall, specializes in the detection and analysis of biological compounds, principally for the biopharmaceutical industry. Its strengths lie in the analysis of solids and liquids. Oxford Medical Diagnostics (OMD) is a spin-out from Oxford University and, by using laser-based techniques, specializes in gas-detection technology.
One day these breath tests could be a part of the type of ‘health MOT’ that Gordon Brown seems to envisage for senior citizens. But this could be some way off, and plenty of obstacles must be overcome.
The idea that what we breathe out can give a clue to the state of our insides is not new. That the breath of patients suffering from certain diseases is characterized by a specific odour has been known since the time of Hippocrates. The fruity aroma of acetone is related to untreated diabetes, while the fishy smell of sulfur compounds is an indication of liver impairment.
Breath Diagnostics : Nothing new under the sun
As long ago as the 1780s Antoine Lavoisier identified carbon dioxide as a major constituent of exhaled breathe, while in 1971 the Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling identified a large number of volatiles in human breathe by breathing through a very cold tube and then analyzing the frozen compounds by means of gas chromatography. Today basic breath tests are used by clinicians, most commonly to diagnose stomach ulcers by monitoring the amount of carbon dioxide produced by the bacterium Helicobacter Pylori.
Point of care breath analysis is an attractive notion. It is non-invasive and could be delivered via a portable device that could give an instant analysis. However, this is a tough challenge for three reasons.
First of all every time we breathe out, we exhale mostly the air that we have just breathed in – complete with all its contaminants. Secondly there is the task of matching any trace gases (‘markers’) in the breath to an underlying condition of the body.
There has been some progress here. Little more than a decade ago nitric oxide, a prominent constituent of exhaled breathe, was regarded as a noxious gaseous component of air pollution. However research has since shown that nitric oxide is produced by a variety of human tissues so that, for example, the concentration of nitric oxide in the breath will be increased when the airways are inflamed, as is the case with patients with asthma.
Finally the techniques used to analyze breath must be highly sensitive and, if point of care is to become a reality, relatively inexpensive and portable. This is where OMD’s expertise in enhanced laser spectroscopy gives it an advantage over conventional methods such as gas chromatography and mass spectrometry.
Once bioscientists have matched the various markers to their underlying causes, OMD hopes to be able to supply the devices that the doctors will use. This could be at least five years away, but OMD has other prospects for business that are much closer at hand.
One of these is called head space monitoring – but it has nothing to do with the brain. This ‘head space’ describes the space above the liquid contained in a half-full container. Imagine a urine sample in a test tube. Above the liquid will be the gases given off by the urine. These gases can be analyzed for clues as to any underlying disease. A particular application could be for diarrhoeal diseases where, as we all know, there is no shortage of gas.
But the most immediate opportunity for OMD’s technology is in industry. There are many points where gas can contaminate or be an irritant in the chain of industrial processing. Or else gas itself can be contaminated by outside agents.
Take a gas pipeline, for example. There are several points at which water can get into the pipe. This can freeze the pipelines or, if mixed with other chemicals, can rot them. Oil refineries cannot afford to let contaminants get into their pipes, while circuit board manufacturers can find that their products are unreliable unless all traces of cleaning agents have been removed from the atmosphere.
So there are a number of industrial processes that can be affected by the presence of gas. Today these processes are typically monitored by sensors, but this technology is in some cases archaic. By using enhanced laser spectroscopy OMD could take a gas sample at any time during an industrial process and analyze it for contaminants, offering the real chance of an improvement over existing techniques.
So this is an interesting deal for Avacta, broadening its product range and adding expertise in the general field of gas analysis. Avacta is hoping to generate its first meaningful turnover this year, and although this penny share does not yet qualify for the Red Hot Penny Shares portfolio, it certainly seems to be heading in the right direction
Regards,
Tom Bulford
for The Penny Sleuth
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