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NEWS
Northumbria University NEWS • Summer 2021
Spinout success
Far left: Dr Sterghios Moschos (right) pictured with Design Engineer Saqib Ali. PBM-HALE ™ (left) is currently being trialled in Germany, Brazil and Greece. PulmoBioMed are working to reduce the product into a lipstick-sized device (concept version bottom left)
Scientists at Northumbria have worked with the University’s Research and Innovation Services team to launch PulmoBioMed, a medtech spinout company whose lead product for collecting breath samples could revolutionise diagnosis of a range of diseases, including Covid-19.
The company was founded by Associate Professor Dr Sterghios Moschos, PulmoBioMed’s Chief Scientific Officer. He is working alongside Chief Executive Officer Dr Pete Hotten, who has 20 years of Board-level management experience in medtech startups and SMEs; Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Brookes, a Northumbria University alumnus with 15 years’ experience of working in the medical device industry; and Chair Dr Huw Edwards, who has over 30 years of global experience in emerging diagnostic technologies. PulmoBioMed has developed PBM-HALE™, a hand-held aerosol collecting device that allows sampling of the lung in a non-invasive way - by patients simply breathing into it. To date, all products used for collecting breath samples have issues relating to contamination, sample loss and variability. The spinout’s PBMHALE™ technology resolves these issues: after an extensive world-wide clinical partner triage, devices are currently being trialled in Germany, Brazil and Greece, to determine how SARS-CoV-2 becomes
airborne, and how to detect individuals spreading COVID-19 in this way. The first phase of data collection from this work is due to be published over the summer of 2021. The process of taking the technology from academic research to a spinout company was facilitated with support from Northern Accelerator, a collaboration between Northumbria, Durham, Newcastle and Sunderland Universities to commercialise research and boost the region’s economy. Northern Accelerator’s ‘Proof-of-Concept’ funding supported the development of a first functional prototype. Northumbria graduate, Saqib Ali, was appointed as a Design Engineer at PulmoBioMed and carried out the rapid prototyping of PBM-HALE™ using 3D printers within the University’s engineering labs. A second Northern Accelerator initiative, ‘Executives into Business’, supported the onboarding of the executive team, and a third programme of support, ‘Future Founders’, provided business training. PulmoBioMed also benefitted from North by Northwest Partners’ ‘Innovation to
the Commercialisation of University Research’ (ICURe) scheme, a programme of commercialisation support for teams of academic researchers wishing to explore the commercial potential of their research. The ICURe programme helped validate the market for the spinout’s technology. In addition, the company has also won funding from Innovate UK to support the first 18 months of business development activities. Professor George Marston, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) at Northumbria University, believes the technology has the potential to deliver huge impact in healthcare on a global scale: “We are a
university ambitious to get our innovations out to the market to make a difference, and we encourage and support that process. This new business reflects the hard work of our entrepreneurial staff and the pioneering research we are doing at Northumbria.”
In November 2020, PulmoBioMed attracted the licensing interest of DeepVerge PLC, a company specialising in artificial intelligence, clinical research, medical devices and life science. The partnership will combine the breathalyser PBM-HALE™ with DeepVerge’s ‘Microtox BT’ platform – a rapid analytical technology that will analyse the breath condensate sample to detect disease in less than two minutes. This collaboration hopes to be the starting point for expanding disease detection from breath analysis to more than 40 other diseases including cancer, neurodegenerative, respiratory and metabolic conditions. Dr Pete Hotten, said: “PulmoBioMed has an exciting future with its initial breath sampling technology already recognised as best-in-class by analytical technology companies who are engaged in joint product development projects with PulmoBioMed. “The vision is to develop the sampling technology and integrate it into a number of analytical platforms, both with partners and eventually our own. While PulmoBioMed is currently focused on human healthcare applications, the same technologies also have utility in many other sectors, such as veterinary and biosecurity, as well as doping and illicit drugs testing. PulmoBioMed will maximise its future through a combination of key partnerships and its own product development”, added Dr Hotten. Find out more about Northumbria’s latest spinout and PBM-Hale™ technology at www.pulmobiomed.com.
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