MarketScreener: SQD SQI Diagnostics signs MOU with Owlstone Medical

SQI Diagnostics Inc. announced a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) between SQI and Owlstone Medical to work together on the discovery, development and commercialization of breath-based biomarkers relating to invasive aspergillus lung infection and lung transplant rejection. Owlstone Medical, the global leader in Breath Biopsy® for applications in early disease detection and precision medicine, is a Cambridge, UK company with the vision to save 100,000 lives by realizing the enormous promise of breath based diagnostics. Fungal lung infection is a large risk for certain vulnerable people such as transplant patients, where one-year survival rates for invasive aspergillosis following lung transplant is only 59%. This is largely because antifungal therapies are not appropriate for patients who are on immunosuppressants, and so early and reliable diagnosis of fungal infection is critical. The current gold-standard diagnostic procedures for lung transplant rejection require the regular collection of tissue samples from the lung, which is invasive, expensive and can lead to serious complications. There is therefore a clear need for a better solution. Owlstone Medical’s non-invasive Breath Biopsy platform represents a better approach to current methods, which alongside SQI’s deep experience in lung transplant diagnostics will be used to identify and deploy novel breath-based biomarkers that can indicate early rejection of organs in lung transplant patients.