Medical technology company Pexa says that it has become an industry partner in the Dutch precision medicine project COPD-PARASOL-ILD, which aims to improve the diagnosis and treatment of chronic lung diseases. The company says this in a press release.The collaboration is part of the national initiative P4O2. The focus is on identifying and validating biomarkers for diseases such as COPD and interstitial lung disease.Pexa's patented research instrument will be used at Amsterdam UMC. The technology enables non-invasive sampling from the small airways, where many diseases originate.Today, invasive methods that require bronchoscopy are often used in the investigation of lung diseases. Pexa is now to be evaluated as a simpler alternative based on an exhalation maneuver.Among the other partners in the project are the Dutch universities Amsterdam UMC, UMC Groningen and Utrecht University.The company's CEO Tomas Gustafsson sees the collaboration as an important step in taking the technology from research environments to broader clinical applications."This project is therefore very interesting because it connects academia and industry in the work of developing improved diagnostic tools and treatments," says Tomas Gustafsson.