Owlstone Medical collaborates with J&J unit

Actelion, the Swiss biotech firm acquired by Johnson & Johnson’s (NYSE: JNJ) Janssen unit in a $30 billion deal in 2017, has entered into a collaboration with UK-based Owlstone Medical.

Under the deal, the companies will work to discover and validate a breath-based test to help facilitate the early diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension (PH; and its subtypes). This development program will be solely funded by Actelion, already a leader in the pulmonary arterial hypertension therapy sector with its Tracleer (bosentan) and Opsumit (macitentan), with the latter drug generating sales of $306 million in the first quarter of this year. No financial terms were disclosed.

The collaboration will initially involve collecting breath exhaled volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from over 1,000 patients using Owlstone Medical’s proprietary sampling device, ReCIVA from sites in the UK, USA and other countries in the European Union. These VOCs will be analyzed by Owlstone Medical to identify those that are associated with PH, in order to develop biomarker signature(s) that can help facilitate earlier detection of the disease.