Impact

Leveraged funding

APC has won competitive grants from SFI of €99m
since 2003, and has added to this by winning another
€202m in research funding from Industry, Exchequer,
EU and philanthropic sources. For every €1 invested by
SFI via core funding, APC has added another €2.01 in
matched investment (of which 55% has come from non-
Exchequer sources).

Sustainabilty

 In June 2023, APC researcher Professor Paul O’Toole co-authored a paper called ‘The human microbiome, global health and the Sustainable Development Goals:opportunities and challenges’ in the prestigious journal Nature Reviews Microbiology. The paper outlines how microbes and microbiome research underpin the success of the UN SDGs, and pointed to the need to understand and harness the connections between human activity and microbiomes, climate change, food production and the health of humanity.

Economic

Taking 2022 as a representative year, the total economic impact of APC is €73.7m per annum, meaning that APC helps generate €1.4m per week for the Irish economy and returns €6.56 to the economy for every €1 invested by the State. Separately, for every €1 invested by the State in APC, APC is responsible for returning €0.75 cent of that back to the government in the form of taxes and social insurance contributions.

APC has won competitive grants from SFI of €99m since 2003, and has added to this by winning another €202m in research funding from Industry, Exchequer, EU and philanthropic sources. For every €1 invested by SFI via core funding, APC has added another €2.01 in matched investment (of which 55% has come from non- Exchequer sources).

Spin outs

 4D Pharma Cork Ltd (formerly Tucana Health)
investigated how the composition of bacterial
communities in the gut can aid the diagnosis and
treatment of disease, particularly irritable bowel
syndrome (IBS).

Cork-based Atlantia Clinical Trials specialises in
conducting human clinical studies in functional foods,
supplements, ingredients and live biotherapeutics
Founded in 2012, the company now employs over 80
people with operations in Ireland and in the US.

Adiso Therapeutics (formerly Artugen Therapeutics) is
a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated
to improving the health of patients suffering from
debilitating inflammatory diseases. The company is
trialling new treatments for mild to moderate ulcerative
colitis and recurrent Clostridium difficile infection.

SeqBiome, which was spun out in 2019, provides highquality
next-generation interactive sequencing and
microbiome analysis for academia and industry. The
company provides its bioinformatics analysis services to
clients across sectors such as Pharmaceuticals, Nutrition,
Sport, Healthcare, Agriculture and other Life Sciences.

CaraBia is a new early stage spin-out company from
the APC that will develop novel microbiome-tailored
food products for healthy aging, building on well over
a decade of in-depth analysis of the gut microbiome of
aged cohorts in different settings.

Industry

Since 2003, APC has collaborated with 86 companies from 15 different countries across a variety of sectors including food & nutrition, healthcare, biotechnology, probiotics, dairy, brewing and sport.

Public engagement

APC researchers interact with approx. 80,000 members of the public each year and has delivered over 65,000 science presentations to school students, as well as organising visits to APC labs, public fora, and science fairs.

In 2018, APC launched World Microbiome Day, an annual, public, global event on June 27th to celebrate and explore microbiome science. Since its inception, over
200 events have taken place in almost 30 countries around the world.

Almost 135,000 children have been ‘gobbled up’ passing through the APC Alimentary Adventures - a 10-metre long inflatable gut that mimics the human digestive system - at public events such as the Cork Carnival of Science and our annual visit to Fota Wildlife Park

Science

APC has had a profound and pioneering impact on the world of microbiome research. And our focus on such major societal challenges as chronic and infectious disease, anti-microbial resistance and sustainable food development means that our ground breaking scientific research has huge relevance to human and planetary health.

APC has pioneered new directions of research into microbes and the brain, inflammatory bowel disease and early-life and elderly nutrition. We have discovered thousands of new species of microbes that will underpin medical treatments and will protect foods of the future, displacing antibiotics and increasing sustainability. We have spun out companies that are translating these discoveries to the clinic and market.

Our researchers are recognised as being among the most highly cited and influential in the world and by understanding the composition and structures of the microbiomes in, on and around us, APC is developing new and sustainable tools and approaches to optimising those malleable microbiome communities to support global sustainability and health from infancy to old age.

Intellectual property

In the last 20 years, APC has licensed 47 technologies to industry which has generated IP licence revenue for APC that is being re-invested in the APC Entrepreneurship programme to support early stage researchers and faculty to progress commercial ideas that might one day lead to new spin-out companies.

Sustainable food

APC researcher Prof Paul Cotter co-ordinated the EU Innovation Action MASTER, a 29-partner project to develop new microbial strains, foods, feeds, processes and databases of relevance to the food chain, all with sustainability in mind. As part of the 4.5-year initiative, APC researchers were involved in the sequencing of DNA from food samples, in order to audit microbes in the food chain in Europe. They identified 2,000 types of microbe in the food chain and created a reference database with 10,000 genomes. This means it is now easier to quickly identify what microbes are in the food chain, and use that information to improve food quality and safety.

Alumni

Over the past 20 years, 719 alumni have been trained at APC of which more than 42% have taken up employment in industry.

Since 2013, APC has produced over 250 PhD Graduates to fuel the research and innovation ecosystem.

Distinctions

APC Principal Investigators have received 164 significant distinctions and awards. 

13 Of the 33 Irish scientists featured on the 2023 Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers list are from APC.

APC has produced more than 3,000 peer-reviewed publications, which have been cited more than 164,000 times.