Transcript EI Pharmaceutical Seminar Barcelona

Fostering a positive environment for R&D
IPHA, Aviva Stadium, 01-12-11
Dr Graham Love
Director General
Science Foundation Ireland (SFI)
the foundation of the smart economy
Science Foundation Ireland
•10 years old
• Based on the US-NSF model
• >€1.5 Billion committed to date
“SFI will build and strengthen scientific and
engineering research and its infrastructure in the
areas of greatest strategic value to Ireland’s long
term competitiveness and development.”
LIFE
SCIENCE
ICT
ENERGY
Annual investment
€150m - €160m
Competitive research proposals
“Oriented basic research”
Quality/Excellence –
International Peer Review
THE FOUNDATION OF THE PRODUCTIVE ECONOMY
Food Science
Astronomy
Agriculture
Earth & Environmental Sciences
Computational & Mathematical Biology
Energy
Mathematics
Microbiology
Genetics & Genomics
Neuroscience & Behaviour
Biomedicine
Biochemistry
Immunity & Infection
Chemistry
Materials Science
Engineering
Networking & Communications Systems
Molecular & Cell Biology
Computer & Information Sciences
Physics
0%
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
12%
14%
€25M
Centres
Recruitment
€6.5M
Clusters
Travel
Fellowships
€1.0M
Investigators
Frontiers
Conferences
€250K
Proof-ofconcept
Workshops
Publication Output: Quality
There has been a commensurate
increase in the level of precommercial outputs including
patents, licences and spin-out
companies
1981
1991
8th in Materials
3rd 2001
in Immunology
(citations per research paper)
Source: Thomson Reuters InCites March 2010
An international team...
SFI directly supports
~3000 researchers;
SFI PIs leverage funding
for an additional 3000
Of these ~1200 are PhD
candidates,
~800 are postdoctoral
fellows.
...working across the globe
SFI researchers are involved in
>2200 international collaborations
in over 58 countries.
SFI researchers are involved in
collaborations with > 500 companies
Programme Title
Solid State Pharmaceutical Cluster (SSPC)
Principal Investigator
Professor Kieran Hodnett
Lead Institution
University of Limerick
Research Programme
Description
This Strategic Research Cluster is a collaboration of 5 Academic and >8 Industrial Partners. The
research question addressed by this cluster is: What are the mechanisms whereby pharmaceutical
solids can be produced with predefined characteristics? The objective is to rationally design solidstate pharmaceutical materials in the required physical and chemical forms to meet the demands of
advanced formulation and drug delivery systems.
Industry Partners
Pfizer, Roche, Clarochem Ireland Ltd, Merck, Eli Lilly, Janssen Pharmaceutical Ltd, GlaxoSimthKine,
Hovione
Research Team Size
Medium: 11 – 49
Programme Title
Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC)
Director
Professor Fergus Shanahan
Lead Institution
University College Cork
Research Programme
Description
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Industry Partners
Research Team Size
To investigate the means by which intestinal bacteria influence health and disease
To develop new therapies for lifelong debilitating gastrointestinal diseases such as
gastroenteritis, ulcerative colitis, and Crohn’s disease
To explore commercial opportunities in both the pharma and functional food sector and to
position Ireland at the forefront of this exciting new area
To attract the brightest and most enthusiastic students to our Postgraduate Programme and to
deliver a training programme renowned for its excellence
To provide a resource for education and training of industry personnel by delivering a high level
of expertise suited to both food and pharma
To actively promote communication with government, Irish and international industry and the
public, in particular schools and young people, on issues such as gastrointestinal disorders,
probiotics and functional foods as well as keeping the public abreast of new therapeutic agents,
ongoing clinical trials and exciting new research findings
Alimentary Health Limited, GlaxoSmithKline
Large: 50+
Programme Title
Irish Drug Delivery Network (IDDN)
Principal Investigator
Professor David Brayden
Lead Institution
University College Dublin
Research Programme
Description
The IDDN is a network of scientists led by David Brayden, Professor of Drug Delivery at UCD,
advancing research efforts to replace injections with oral and inhaled versions of biotech molecules
(e.g. proteins and gene-based medicines). In this research project we are concentrating on oral and
airway delivery of a range of peptides including two for osteoporosis: calcitonin and parathyroid
hormone.
A second channel of therapy is our gene delivery research. In terms of nucleic acids, we are working
on siRNA for inflammatory diseases both in the bowel and in the lungs.
The delivery aspect of siRNA therapy is the bottleneck to progress of these medicines. We will be
entrapping these molecules in novel particles made from new polymers, which will have the facility
to be targeted to regions of the gut as well as being inhaled into the deep lung.
Industry Partners
Research Team Size
Genzyme, Sigmoid Pharma, Aerogen Ltd, Arch Therapeutics (Boston)
Medium: 11 – 49
Principal Investigator
Dr. Barry O’Sullivan
Lead Institution
University College Cork
Research Programme
Description
The Irish Government recently invested e 30 million in IBM’s “green” data centre in Dublin. Microsoft
has invested US$500 million in data centres in Ireland. The Head of IT innovation at Intel has stated
that Ireland could lead the world in green data centres. This project focuses on the science required
to support the management of resources of data centres so that energy costs are minimised.
Software applications and services made available in the cloud are often implemented by multiple
data centres. This makes energy management complex, but also ntroduces security and data
governance concerns, which this project will also consider. We will also show how our science can be
used in other domains. We will collaborate with the Health Service Executive on several resource
management and scheduling problems. The Cork Constraint Computation Centre is an extremely
successful SFI-funded lab; this grant provides core support for its continued success.
Industry Partners
EMC Ireland; Cork Internet Exchange; HSE; Treemetrics ltd., Bell Labs (USA); British Telecom (UK);
Xerox (USA)
Research Team Size
Large: 50+
What has Ireland achieved?
•
Built a credible base of world class research teams
•
Helped drive Irish universities up the world rankings
•
Driven up quality of Ireland’s scientific research
– Top 20 overall in Thomson Reuters rankings
•
Internationalisation of Irish research – 58 countries
•
Created a high level of Intellectual Property
•
Established an entirely new model of collaboration
between industry & academia
– 867 linkages across 534 companies employing
over 82,000 people in Ireland with exports in
excess of €70 billion e.g. Pfizer, Intel, MSD, HP,
Cisco, Sigmoid, Treemetrics, SolarPrint etc.
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What has Ireland achieved?
The ‘third pillar’ assists IDA/EI in anchoring & transforming the industrial base!
– EI: Tech Transfer Growth
– IDA: from below 10% RDI five years ago to 50%
now
– R&D firms v non-R&D firms – past decade
• Exports: €38b -> €87b (€44b -> €27b)
• GVA: €24b -> €45b (€19b -> €18b)
• Employment: +167k -> 172k (143k -> 78k)
IDA Investment
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In conclusion
• From a near-zero base in the late 1990s
• We have built a highly credible research base
in Ireland
• It is an internationally competitive national
resource
• The environment is ripe to progress R & D
• And deliver better healthcare through
partnership & innovation