Company hopes to market a point-of-care test for diabetes in 2012.
Oxford Medical Diagnostics (OMD), the developer of breath-based tests for metabolic and infectious diseases, reports raising £981,000 (roughly $1.61 million). The funding will be used in the development of its device for the diagnosis and monitoring of type 1 and 2 diabetes.
By next year, the company aims to bring to market a point-of-care diagnostic that detects the volatile gas acetone, which is reportedly a known marker for both types of diabetes. This test is based on OMD’s CEAS (cavity enhanced absorption spectroscopy) and PES (plasma emission spectroscopy) technologies, and the company is also working on diagnostics for infectious diseases.
OMD says that it has raised £2.2 million to date. The company also generates revenue from its gas analysis service segment. Besides the CEAS and PES platforms, OMD’s technologies included broadband CEAS. The firm says that it recently signed an R&D agreement with gas analyst specialist Michell Instruments of Ely.