ChromX Health Secures Tens of Millions in Angel+ Round, Advances Clinical Validation of Breath VOC Diagnostics

VCBeat learned exclusively that on October 1, ChromX Health, a company specializing in precise VOC breath testing, announced the completion of its tens-of-millions-yuan Angel+ round of financing. This round was solely invested by Country Garden Ventures, and the funds will be used to further expand the team, conduct clinical collaborations with hospitals, and accelerate the research and development of new products.

ChromX Health is a platform company that leverages breath metabolomics, combined with MEMS microfluidics and AI technology, to rapidly achieve precise diagnosis of multiple diseases. Within just a few months of its establishment, ChromX Health has completed multiple rounds of financing.

ChromX Health’s core technologies are built upon over two decades of technological expertise accumulated at the University of Michigan in the United States, with investment and joint R&D participation from the National Technology Innovation Center for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region and the Collaborative Innovation Research Institute of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The company was established in Guangzhou in April 2021, and in May, it announced the completion of its tens-of-millions-yuan angel financing round led by ZhenFund.

Dr. Wang Junqi, founder of ChromX Health, stated, “Just like blood, exhaled breath carries a wealth of information about human metabolism and health. Over the past four decades, research on volatile organic compound (VOC) biomarkers in exhaled breath has demonstrated a direct and strong correlation between VOC molecules and many diseases. Analysis of VOCs in exhaled breath enables precise diagnosis, monitoring of treatment efficacy and disease progression, as well as early warning and screening for various conditions, including infectious diseases, chronic diseases, and cancer. This approach holds immense development potential and significant clinical value. Consequently, many domestic investment firms, particularly leading ones, have conducted systematic research into this sector and its application scenarios. We are honored that ChromX Health has rapidly attracted attention from multiple investors since its establishment. We also extend our sincere gratitude to Country Garden Ventures for their recognition of ChromX Health and the emerging field of breath-based diagnostics.”

Sun Lianghao, Managing Director of Country Garden Venture Capital and Head of the Healthcare Sector, stated, “The in vitro diagnostics (IVD) sector, where ChromX Health operates, is one of the largest sub-segments within the medical device industry, characterized by intense competition yet abundant opportunities. Within the IVD landscape, ChromX Health represents an emerging niche focused on diagnosing various diseases through breath analysis, offering a more cost-effective and convenient solution. We are optimistic about sub-sectors and emerging industries within the broader healthcare space. Currently, ChromX Health has improved the detection precision of its technical equipment by at least three orders of magnitude. Looking ahead, ChromX Health can leverage AI algorithms and data accumulation to establish an integrated ‘device + data algorithm’ model for comprehensive diagnostic solutions.”

Within just a few months of its establishment, ChromX Health has built a complete team for technology development and operations. The company is currently focusing on the development of small point-of-care testing (POCT) breath analysis devices, software, and algorithms, as well as the collection of clinical data.

ChromX Health’s compact POCT breath-testing device, developed based on MEMS microfluidics technology, features intelligence, portability, non-invasiveness, low cost, high resolution, and short detection time. It eliminates the dependence of traditional large-scale instruments on specialized laboratories, enabling rapid collection and analysis of patient samples at the point of care. This addresses the shortcomings of conventional large-scale testing equipment, such as cumbersome operation, lengthy detection and data analysis times, and inapplicability at the bedside or in community settings, thereby accelerating the widespread adoption of breath VOC testing in hospitals, health examination institutions, and even communities.

Dr. Wang Junqi emphasized that low cost, high precision, and miniaturization are the three major highlights of ChromX Health’s POCT breath-testing devices.

Cost: Compared with blood samples, the collection of breath samples and VOC detection do not require excessive reagent-based consumables, effectively controlling testing costs.

Precision: To enhance detection accuracy, ChromX Health first conducts full-spectrum analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in human exhaled breath to ensure data completeness. Subsequently, artificial intelligence algorithms are employed to perform intelligent quantitative and qualitative analysis of biomarker panels, enabling disease diagnosis and assessment of disease severity based on the concentrations of individual biomarkers.

Miniaturization: Miniaturization has long been a trend in the global technological development of exhaled breath VOC detection, but achieving truly compact and portable devices requires overcoming numerous technical barriers. Dr. Wang Junqi stated, “MEMS microfluidic technology is the core enabler for the miniaturization of VOC detection devices. However, MEMS chips present multiple technical challenges in design, fabrication, packaging, and testing, imposing extremely high demands on technical personnel and the overall manufacturing environment. Furthermore, there are significant barriers to system integration: determining which functions should be integrated onto which chips, ensuring that individual chips can collaborate independently to achieve their respective functions, and integrating various chip modules into a cohesive system are all critical issues that engineers must address and resolve.”

Leveraging its team’s years of expertise in microfluidics and exhaled volatile organic compound (VOC) detection, along with extensive experience accumulated in both laboratory and industrial settings, ChromX Health has successfully miniaturized exhaled VOC detection devices. It is the world’s first company to achieve point-of-care testing (POCT) for breath analysis at the parts-per-trillion (ppt, 10⁻¹²) level, thereby opening the door to the clinical application of exhaled VOC detection.

Currently, ChromX Health has established clinical collaborations with the University of Michigan Hospitals and multiple Grade A tertiary hospitals in China, focusing on critical care conditions in intensive care units (ICUs), as well as common chronic diseases and respiratory-related disorders.

In the ICU, the POCT intelligent breath analyzer developed by ChromX Health continuously tracks the exhalation profiles of critically ill patients. This not only assists physicians in making rapid diagnoses but also predicts disease progression based on changes in the patients' exhalation profiles, thereby securing valuable time for treatment.

Dr. Wang Junqi stated that non-invasive monitoring of patients’ physiological status at the molecular level through exhaled breath in the ICU can significantly alleviate the pain associated with blood sampling in critically ill patients while enabling continuous, dynamic monitoring of their condition, thereby holding substantial clinical value.

In the field of chronic diseases, ChromX Health has conducted clinical follow-up studies on adult asthma in collaboration with Grade A tertiary hospitals in China. The study showed that exhaled VOC testing for adult asthma had a specificity of 94.6%, a sensitivity of 94.1%, and an overall accuracy of 94.4%, which is significantly higher than that of FeNO testing, commonly used in clinical practice.

Furthermore, ChromX Health’s intelligent breath analyzer not only detects asthma but also accurately identifies asthma subtypes and evaluates drug efficacy by tracking post-medication breath profiles, thereby providing guidance for clinical medication and benefiting nearly 50 million asthma patients in China.

Dr. Wang Junqi stated, “In addition to critical illnesses and chronic diseases, the company will also conduct prospective cohort studies on non-invasive rapid diagnosis of respiratory diseases and pan-cancer early screening.”

However, Dr. Wang Junqi also noted that the exhaled VOC testing industry remains in its early stages, with numerous challenges hindering commercial and clinical adoption. For instance, the wide variety and abundance of VOCs in exhaled breath mean that no systematic, comprehensive database of disease biomarkers or standardized clinical diagnostic criteria has yet been established globally. These are key areas where ChromX Health aims to collaborate with stakeholders across society.

“We hope that experts, academicians, and clinicians in the industry will join hands with ChromX Health to conduct extensive clinical trials, determine the relationship between diseases and biomarkers, and leverage artificial intelligence technologies to overcome data analysis challenges, thereby jointly promoting the rapid development of the industry.”

Going forward, ChromX Health will continue to collaborate with more hospitals on clinical trials, build an artificial intelligence team, secure regulatory approval for its compact POCT breath-testing devices, establish expert consensus, and promote the development of industry standards, thereby accelerating the adoption of breath VOC testing in hospitals, health examination centers, and households.

Country Garden Ventures is the direct equity investment arm of Country Garden Group. Guided by the strategy of “industrial empowerment and value co-creation,” it focuses on four key investment themes: industrial chains, hard technology, big health, and new consumption. The firm invests across stages, from early-stage venture capital (VC) to mid-to-late-stage private equity (PE), building a phased, sector-specific, and multi-tiered investment portfolio. Forty-five percent of its investments are distributed across advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, and carbon neutrality sectors.