"The lung is poorly served by non-ionising or low-dose imaging technologies. Thoracic CT scanning is the main technique available, but does not permit routine follow-up or longitudinal monitoring because of the unacceptably high radiation dose, especially in children. Bioxydyn Ltd is an imaging services business offering quantitative MRI biomarkers for pharma, clinical and academic clients and was spun out of the University of Manchester in 2010 with proprietary technology offering MRI in the lung known as oxygen-enhanced MRI (OE-MRI). It has provided services based on this capability to pharma since 2012, as it is known to show disease and drug effects with low patient numbers. While Bioxydyn has delivered OE-MRI for pharma clinical trials, long term ambitions are to further develop and validate the technique for imaging services customers and to drive its adoption in clinical management of respiratory diseases. Bioxydyn and its clinical partners believe that OE-MRI is capable of predicting the effectiveness of respiratory therapies much earlier than the current clinical judgements. OE-MRI has commercial benefit as a therapy selection tool, especially for expensive biologics in, for example, severe asthma. OE-MRI also has a significant opportunity to improve the management of cystic fibrosis in children. Ultimately, for commercial adoption, this needs to be proven in a clinical setting. Bioxydyn has so far optimised the image acquisition protocol, installed it on routine clinical scanners, implemented signal processing techniques in reliable software and developed quality control techniques. Most importantly, pilot data from key opinion leaders show the potential of OE-MRI to characterise disease and show therapy response (e.g. Martini et. al. 2018). These steps were achieved through a 2014 InnovateUK project and subsequent in-house efforts. This application now concerns the final pieces of development required before major multicenter studies designed to prove clinical and economic benefit. With this project Bioxydyn and its clinical lead partners will have all of the tools and data necessary to establish major multi-centre clinical trials designed to prove clinical and commercial benefit to the NHS and pharma."

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic respiratory disease, characterized by airflow obstruction to the lungs, interfering with normal breathing. It is one of the most common respiratory diseases and the WHO predicts it to be the 3rd leading cause of death worldwide by 2020. Early clinical diagnosis is critical to prevent further deterioration of the lungs and improved patient care. However, there is no single diagnostic test for COPD and current clinical diagnostic and lung imaging techniques rely upon diagnostic tests that are non-specific, unreliable, time consuming, or that use harmful radiation, restricting their repeated use in patients for monitoring disease progression or therapeutic response. Bioxydyn Limited are an SME founded in 2009, with the objective of developing a software tool with associated gas delivery and scanning protocols for functional lung imaging using Oxygen Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (OE-MRI). Their technique is novel and will revolutionise the use of imaging in COPD and other forms of lung disease. It will provide a safe, non-invasive regionally-resolved approach to measure lung function and anatomy that can be used to assess disease status and treatment response. This project will result in a 3D OE-MRI scanning protocol for use in radiology settings in hospitals worldwide, communicating with MRI systems via Picture Archiving & Communication Systems (PACS) & with other hospital information systems. Initial market entry with a beta release package is anticipated early 2015.