Teaching a Machine to 'Smell' Disease

In this episode, Ben chats to Dr Andy Boyce, CEO and co-founder of Rosa Biotech, a biotechnology spin-out from the University of Bristol as part of our Innovation Club.

Rosa are developing a sensing platform for early diagnosis of a broad spectrum of diseases. Their technology uses protein design to produce chemical fingerprints across a range of biomarkers from human samples, which are then used in machine learning to develop a system that will be able to spot early indicators of disease. This technology is inspired by the olfaction system in dogs, who have more than 300 million scent receptors, and have demonstrated an ability to detect malignancies from cancer to parkinsons and even Covid-19 through smell alone.

Andy shares with us his journey from PhD to working in research commercialisation and innovation, to moving into the CEO role at Rosa and explains more about the technology, how the company has been progressing and his experience of being CEO.