Ireland's Growing Pharmaceutical Industry to Benefit
Waters Corporation and University College Cork (UCC) will announce (27 April 2006) a joint collaboration that enhances UCC's Analytical and Biological Chemistry Research Facility's (ABCRF) reputation as a world-class research institution and educator in state-of the-art research and technology for Ireland's rapidly developing pharmaceutical industry.
The ABCRF, under the direction of Professor Anita Maguire, is housed with UCC's School of Pharmacy in the new state-of-the-art Cavanagh Pharmacy Building. The collaboration has seen an investment in the facility of a new suite of analytical instrumentation including Waters(r) Quattro micro(tm) triple quadrupole and LCT Premier(tm) time-of-flight mass spectrometers. ABCRF will officially open the Waters Mass Spectrometry Laboratory on 27 April next.
According to Professor Maguire, "Research at UCC is both vibrant and successful and we aim to provide the highest quality scientific education. This new strategic alliance with Waters Corporation will enable UCC's ABCRF, already widely recognized as a centre of expertise in pharmaceutical chemistry, to develop a high quality research program, benefiting pharmaceutical researchers in both the academic and industrial sectors. ABCRF plans to offer its industrial partners in Ireland access to its state-of-the-art facility and apply its new mass spectrometry technology to developing highly-sensitive, quantitative and qualitative methods for pharmaceutical analysis, including low-level impurity profiling of drug compounds. We very much welcome the collaboration with Waters, in particular their visionary approach to industry-university interaction, and anticipate expansion of this key research partnership in the future", she said.
"Waters mass spectrometry technology is used widely for pharmaceutical analyses throughout the world," said Brian Smith, Senior Director of Pharmaceutical Market Development, Waters Corporation. "State-of-the-art mass spectrometers capable of providing qualitative and quantitative analyses can help the pharmaceutical industry in Ireland significantly improve manufacturing efficiencies. UCC's expertise and will be key in helping the local market and we are delighted to be involved in this collaboration with them and look forward to working with Professor Maguire and her team."
UCC President, Professor Gerard T. Wrixon on endorsing the partnership between UCC and Waters said, "Partnerships such as that represented by UCC and Waters are vital for the university to fulfill its ambition to provide the highest quality research-led teaching to its 15,500 strong student cohort while contributing to the growth of industry in the area through the provision of research and services." He also referred to UCC's selection as Ireland's University of the Year by The Sunday Times for the second time in three years and acknowledged the support of Atlantic Philanthropies (AP) and the Higher Education Authority of Ireland (HEA) who have been instrumental in the introduction of the hugely beneficial Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI). UCC, incorporating the ABCRF, has benefited considerably from PRTLI enabling it to achieve significant success in research internationally.
As part of the partnership, Waters will also support a PhD studentship for Fiona Deane under the direction of Dr Florence McCarthy and Professor Anita Maguire. Ms Deane's research will focus on the mass spectral structural identification of compounds of pharmaceutical relevance and their binding interactions.
For more information relating to the collaboration visit www.waters.com/ireland.
About Waters Corporation (www.waters.com)
Waters Corporation holds worldwide leading positions in three complementary analytical technologies: liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry, and thermal analysis. These market segments account for $4.5 - $5.0billion of the overall $20+ billion analytical instrumentation market.
About the UCC Cavanagh Pharmacy Building
The new Cavanagh Pharmacy Building at UCC, built at a cost of €22.3m, was officially opened on March 6th 2006 by Mr Micheál Martin TD, Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment. The Cavanagh Pharmacy Building comprises some 5,600m2 of teaching and research laboratories, lecture theatres and seminar rooms and support space. It is home to both the undergraduate and postgraduate facilities of UCC's new School of Pharmacy, as well as to the university's Analytical and Biological Chemistry Research Facility (ABCRF), and also houses a dedicated industry suite to facilitate collaboration between UCC and the pharmaceutical industry. The Cavanagh Pharmacy Building is located adjacent to the university's BioSciences Institute and the BioTransfer Unit to facilitate leading edge university-industry research collaborations.
"The Cavanagh Pharmacy Building, by housing both the School of Pharmacy and the ABCRF, demonstrates UCC's commitment to the belief that research and teaching should be integrated, as they enhance each other," said Professor Anita Maguire, Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and Director of the ABCRF ( http://chemweb.ucc.ie/ABCRF/ABCRF.htm )
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