Noze, a Canadian medical technology startup developing breath-based diagnostics devices, has secured $5 million in equity financing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
According to the company’s announcement on July 30, 2024, the equity investment will support developing and deploying the Noze disease detection system to fight infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis in low and mid-income countries.
Founded in 2015 by Ashok Masilamani, the startup’s latest financing round marks the foundation’s first equity investment in Canada. The round follows two previous grants from the same foundation, making its total contributed to a whopping Noze $ 6.8 million.
Noze breath-based diagnostic device holds the potential to dramatically improve access to high-quality tests for infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis (TB), which infects about 10 million people across the globe annually, resulting in the death of some 1.5 million despite being preventable and treatable.
DiagNoze®— Diagnostic Breathalizer
Designed to be easy to use, DiagNoze is a handheld diagnostic breathalyzer that leverages revolutionary odor perception technology to detect the presence of biomarkers in a patient’s breath, allowing for immediate detection of infectious diseases such as TB and serious illnesses such as cancers.
Unlike traditional invasive testing techniques, which involved visiting labs, taking blood samples, using complex equipment to analyze samples, and a long turnaround time, DiagNoze only requires the patient’s breath to complete the test without visiting a health facility.
Additionally, the revolutionary diagnostic device is non-invasive, cost-effective, portable, and gives results in real-time. As such, it can be used at any point of care, including the patient’s home, bridging the existing accessibility gap.
