Interacting with APC
The research activities of APC are relevant to many different industry sectors – food, pharma, biotechnology, infant nutrition, medical foods, diagnostics, sports nutrition, and animal health areas such as veterinary, companion pet care and animal feed. APC is a national resource with a research agenda that is fully aligned with the national research priority areas. The APC’s principal investigators and faculty are experts across a range of disciplines, and are leading global experts in their fields. APC has also developed an array of technology platforms that are of benefit to industry clients in furthering their own R&D agendas.
APC has over a decade of experience in managing industry interactions across a broad range of areas. We welcome new strategic industry partners from Ireland and globally, through a variety of flexible modalities, including research collaborations and industry-academia placements. The benefits of partnership include the ability to undertake collaborative research with a reduced overhead cost, access to our technology platforms, our extensive databases and the reservoir of knowledge held by the APC investigators (subject to confidentiality, intellectual property arrangements and respect for existing partnerships). In addition, there is reputational benefit accruing from interacting with one of the leading centres of excellence in gut microbiota in the world.
The translation of APC research to commercial outputs is of primary importance in our research programme. The APC is well practiced in managing intellectual property, has intimate knowledge of the specific needs of commercial/industrial collaborators, and has its own Intellectual Property Manager. We work closely with the relevant State agencies and can support clients in accessing appropriate state funding mechanisms.
Those interested in collaborating with the APC please contact: Brendan Curran, Interim General Manager
Intellectual Property (IP) Management
APC has a decade of experience as a translational research centre collaborating with a wide range of Industry partners, and has developed a rigorous approach to, and practise of, IP discovery and management, to maximise the return on research investment. Central to this is the close integration of APC IP Management personnel, including the APC’s Commercialisation Case Manager, Emer O'Shea with the Commercialisation and Intellectual Property Committee (CIPC), Executive Management Group (EMG), and the University’s Technology Transfer Office (TTO).
All APC staff are informed of the workings of the Centre in relation to its translational objectives, industry interactions, and IP agreements. The use of Researcher Undertakings protects IP ownership, while diligent use of Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs) and Confidential Disclosure Agreements (CDAs) regulates and protects transfer of materials and information, and publication screening prevents unauthorised or premature disclosure of sensitive and valuable IP. Inventions and innovations are captured and evaluated for patentability and commercial potential before proceeding with patent applications and mapping out appropriate routes for commercialisation, from licensing to spinouts.
Industry projects are governed by collaboration agreements with input from Industry Steering Committees. Options to license IP are granted to Industry Partners and license agreements are negotiated. APC reserves the right to use IP for research and teaching purposes and freedom to operate is maintained around use of platform tools and technologies to sustain the capacity to attract new industry partners and for training and education purposes.
If you are interested in exploring any of these technology opportunities or discussing potential research collaborations, please contact Emer O'Shea Commercialisation Case Manager emeroshea@ucc.ie
Atlantia Food Clinical Trials Ltd.
Atlantia Food Clinical Trials Ltd is a clinical trials company, based in Blackpool, Cork that spun out of the APC Microbiome Institute at University College Cork in 2013. Atlantia delivers end-to-end solutions for clinical trials in functional ingredients in foods & beverages, nutraceuticals, medical foods and dietary supplements. Over the past few years the team at Atlantia has built a comprehensive client list which includes many of the industry’s biggest names. Running all of their studies in accordance with ICH-GCP ensures that their clients are receiving the highest industry standards in their clinical program.
Atlantia has extensive clinical expertise in many health areas and together with a clinical team of physicians, project managers, research nurses, nutritionists, certified sports trainers, lab researchers and recruitment officers, they ensure that Atlantia can expertly deliver tailored human intervention studies in the specific functional ingredients. They have a subject database of healthy volunteers, elderly, subjects with mild GI conditions and athletes, now in approaching 14,000 people.
Atlantia has a highly flexible structure, with expertise in running acute, observational and intervention studies across a broad spectrum of functional food and beverage categories, such as dairy, cereal, probiotic, different protein forms, vitamins/minerals, plant or marine extracts and medical foods. Atlantia can provide support to your projects anywhere from pre-clinical research, product development and packaging, to managing all aspects of the trial including protocol design, recruitment, and study execution, sample and data analysis, statistics and report/dossier preparation.
Their close affiliation with APC Microbiome Ireland and Teagasc at Moorepark Research Centre, as well as other research partners has helped position Atlantia as an expert in the areas of digestive health, cognitive health and probiotic/prebiotic research. With a world renowned team of Clinicians and Scientists, supported by Atlantia’s team of project managers, nurses and nutritionists, conducting clinical studies to drug trial standards, reinforces Atlantia’s creditability as a world leader in this field.
If you would like further information, please see the Atlantia website at www.atlantiafoodclinicaltrials.com or email bskillington@atlantiafoodtrials.com
4D pharma Cork Ltd (previously Tucana Health Ltd)
4D pharma Cork Ltd is a spin-out from the APC Microbiome Institute founded as Tucana Health in February 2016 by Professors Fergus Shanahan and Paul O’Toole. The focus of the company is to investigate how the composition of bacterial communities in the gut can aid the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Recent advances in the field have highlighted the importance of the gut microbiome, not only for the development of safe and efficacious new therapeutics, but also in the discovery of novel personalised diagnostic tools.
4D pharma Cork Ltd was formerly known as Tucana Health Ltd. before recently being acquired by 4D pharma plc, a pharmaceutical company focusing on the development of live biotherapeutics, a novel and emerging class of drugs. The spin-out company currently with a staff of 6 employees, will help to build further research capability, by providing high end research jobs. While the initial focus of the spin-out company will be on diagnosis and patient stratification for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), the long term objective is to build a diagnostic platform across multiple disease areas, mirroring the programmes developed by 4D’s proprietary platform, MicroRx for the discovery of novel live biotherapeutics. For further information please contact Dr Eileen O’ Herlihy Site Manager.
Artugen Therapeutics
Artugen Therapeutics is a new spin-out company from the APC Microbiome Institute founded in 2016 by Profs Paul Ross and Colin Hill. The company is licensing significant IP from the APC Microbiome Institute. The company will focus on the discovery and development of targeted treatments for bacterial infections. Artugen Therapeutics has attracted a Series A investment from Morningside Ventures, a top Hong-Kong and US-based international venture company. Former Cubist Pharma Senior Vice President, Dr. Ronnie Farquhar has been appointed as the CEO.
