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Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences Graduate News

Congrats! SMU alums Edward Allegra, Miguel Quimbar and Jack Reynolds, co-founders of BioLum Sciences, honored by PM360 magazine as one of 14 most innovative startups in 2017

PM 360

Originally Posted: December 17, 2017

BioLum Sciences

Edward Allegra, CEO
ecallegra@biolumsciences.com

Left to right: Miguel Quimbar (CTO), Edward Allegra (CEO), Jack Reynolds (COO/CFO)

BioLum Sciences was founded in 2015 after its co-founders realized the potential of their university research to revolutionize the healthcare industry. So, they set out to commercialize the technology and have raised more than $1,500,000 through grants, prize, and venture investment.

The BioSense AMD (Airway Monitoring Device) will enable rapid, inexpensive, and quantitative determination of H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) in exhaled breath, providing a valuable solution to measure airway inflammation attractive to a wide customer base ranging from biomedical research entities, to specialist doctors and primary care clinicians, and to the patients themselves. The current invention has two key innovations: 1) The composition of an optimized chemical system where the reaction can be made sensitive to a wide range of analytes through the use of a carefully designed system. 2) Methods to image, detect, and quantify the chemical emission through the use of low-cost photon detection instrumentation, and the use of the computational capacity that is an integral component of modern smartphones.

With this technology, asthma patients will have the ability to identify the presence and severity of their symptoms as a means of better understanding and improving their health, which could allow for greater treatment adherence and improved outcomes. Physicians will also have the ability to identify treatment progress with the vast amounts of personalized data generated through the device.

BioLum Sciences has performed more than four different research studies, which compare its product to the current gold standard of breath analysis—and the results have been great. One of the studies was published in a national scientific journal last year, and the company is currently preparing for a clinical trial next year to further validate the product. READ MORE