A breath test that could detect lung cancer is to undergo clinical trials in British hospitals.
A spin-off firm from Cambridge University, Owlstone, has developed the Lung Cancer Indicator Detection (LuCID) device to detect chemical traces in breath which indicate a patient may have cancer.
Billy Boyle, co-founder of the
firm, told Sky News in the UK a handheld device could be made available to GPs within two years.
He said he began to look at medical applications of the company's technology, originally intended to detect explosives, when his wife Kate Gross was diagnosed with colon cancer two years ago before she died at 36 on Christmas Day.
"The human body makes chemicals, a lot of them are just normal, everyday chemicals, but with cancer and other diseases the cells go a bit wrong and start to make chemicals differently," Mr Boyle told the broadcaster.
