Moncton, New Brunswick and Cambridge, Massachusetts--(Newsfile Corp. - July 22, 2026) - Breathe BioMedical, a company developing a breath analytics platform for early disease detection, today announced that Vitalité Health Network has joined as the first Canadian site in its large multi-center observational data collection study to advance the development of its technology for the early detection of breast cancer in breath for women with dense breasts, as an adjunct to mammography.
The study is being led locally in Moncton by Dr. Jocelyne Hébert, who will oversee the collection of breath samples from participants at Vitalité facilities. Researchers will compare the breath profiles of women with breast cancer and those without breast cancer, with the goal of identifying disease-specific patterns that can be leveraged to facilitate breast cancer detection.
Vitalité Health Network's participation marks an important milestone for the study, extending it beyond the United States for the first time and adding a new Canadian patient population. This broader geographic and demographic representation strengthens the robustness of the machine learning algorithms Breathe BioMedical is developing, while giving New Brunswick women with dense breast tissue earlier access to a research pathway aimed at improving detection where mammography alone has known limitations.
"This partnership illustrates our commitment to research and innovation to better serve our population," said Dr. Jocelyne Hébert. "This technology offers a new perspective in breast cancer detection by strengthening our ability to potentially detect the disease earlier and more accurately. We are proud to contribute to this scientific advancement here in New Brunswick."
Preliminary analysis of Breathe BioMedical's breast cancer proof-of-concept study, conducted in Saint John, New Brunswick, found 88.2% accuracy (92.9% sensitivity, 80.0% specificity) in differentiating between the breath signatures of women with early-stage breast cancer, compared to those without breast cancer, irrespective of breast density. This current study compares the breath profiles of women from a diverse patient population across a range of demographics and geographic areas to further develop Breathe BioMedical's technology.
"As we expand our clinical study with new partners, we are accelerating the collection of reliable data to advance our technology," said Bill Dawes, President and CEO of Breathe BioMedical. "We look forward to working with Dr. Hébert and her team to help develop better non-invasive disease detection options for women."
Approximately 50% of women eligible for breast cancer screening have dense breast tissue, making them four to five times more likely to develop breast cancer than women without dense breast tissue. Although mammography is the current gold standard for breast cancer screening, the interpretation of a mammogram can be especially challenging with dense breast tissue, because both tumors and dense breast tissue appear white on a mammogram. The survival rate for breast cancer exceeds 98% when the disease is detected at an early stage, compared with less than 30% at an advanced stage, underscoring the importance of tools that can improve early detection.
About Breathe BioMedical's Technology
Exhaled breath contains chemicals called Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). These VOCs are a byproduct of metabolism, travel through the blood stream, and are excreted in breath during alveolar gas exchange in the lungs. These compounds and changes in them can provide insights about the state of an individual's health, environmental exposure, and about how the body reacts to changes that may be a result of disease.
Breathe BioMedical has developed a Breath Sampler that allows individuals to provide a breath sample which can then be analyzed for combinations of disease-specific patterns which may be indicative of disease. The sampler collects alveolar breath stored on industry standard sorbent tubes which are transported to our central laboratory. The sample is then processed using our proprietary Spectrometer, with detection capability to parts per trillion levels, producing a spectrographic data set. The Machine Learning Algorithms (MLA) are applied to the spectrographic data set to identify disease-specific patterns that are associated with breast cancer.
About Breathe BioMedical
Breathe BioMedical is developing an innovative breath analytics platform to enable the early detection of disease. Our proprietary breath analytics technology is designed to collect, process and analyze breath samples to identify disease-specific patterns associated with specific diseases. Breathe BioMedical is focused first on developing a breath test for breast cancer detection for women with dense breast tissue, as an adjunct to mammography, with the goal of increasing the detection of breast cancer identified at its earliest stages. Breathe BioMedical is headquartered in Moncton, New Brunswick, with a US subsidiary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We believe that one day detecting disease may be as easy as breathing.
About Vitalité Health Network
Vitalité Health Network is one of New Brunswick's regional health authorities, delivering hospital and community health services, including cancer screening and diagnostic imaging, to patients across the province. Through its participation in this study, Vitalité continues its commitment to advancing research and innovation that improves detection and care for the populations it serves.
For more information, please visit our website and follow us on LinkedIn.
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Contacts:
Media:
Greg Kelly
Breathe BioMedical Inc.
greg.kelly@breathebiomedical.com
To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/306079
Source: Breathe BioMedical Inc.
