In a perfect match of industry and academia, an Irish company with a new drug formulation potentially worth €12.5 million is teaming up with UCD to research drug uptake through the gut.

A Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) industry research partnership supplement grant announced earlier this month will help Dublin-based Sigmoid Biotechnologies refine its proprietary drug-delivery technology in collaboration with a research group led by Dr Cormac Taylor at University College Dublin over the next two years.

The €134,000 grant adds to previous SFI funding received by Dr Taylor, a principal investigator at the Conway Institute, who has developed a low-oxygen model that mimics how orally administered drugs move across the gut wall.

Sigmoid Biotechnologies will use Taylor's model to test its proprietary technology, Ledds, which is designed to make a range of drugs easier for the body to use and more convenient for the patient, says chief executive Dr Ivan Coulter. He says the technology could generate €12.5 million in revenue within five years of launch.

Dr Maurice Treacy, director of biosciences and bioengineering at SFI, says this is the first award in the Industry Research Partnership Supplement programme that involves an indigenous Irish company outside an SFI centre.

"We would encourage Irish SMEs to look at the programme as a mechanism for linking with SFI-funded scientists," he says.

The idea for a Sigmoid-UCD collaboration arose at industry-academic meetings organised by SFI last year.

"That's when the bells started ringing that there could really be potential here," says Dr Taylor, whose group aims to develop drug-delivery strategies that target areas of the gut damaged by conditions such as Crohn's disease.

As the parties discussed the possibilities, NovaUCD drafted and negotiated the research agreement governing the collaboration. Technology transfer project manager Dr Ciarán O'Beirne says in such agreements NovaUCD primarily represents the interests of the university and the researcher, but would seek to strike a fair and equitable deal with the industrial collaborator.

Dr Taylor says the agreement is a key step. "Universities have to protect their inventions but companies have to make profits. NovaUCD was very important in facilitating an intellectual property agreement that both groups were happy with," he says.

Sigmoid, which earlier this year forged a co- development and licensing agreement with Inncardio, intends to license the Ledds technology aggressively and Dr Coulter expects the first products to be on the market within four years.