BioWorld International Correspondent

About a dozen Irish biotechnology and medical device firms will travel to the National Institutes of Health next month on a matchmaking trip that could see some of them licensing intellectual property from U.S. researchers.

The event, due to take place in the second week of May, will provide Irish firms with an overview of the work at the NIH, as well as meetings with individual researchers in their respective areas of interest. The aim is to broaden their in-licensing and cross-licensing options.

"Not every company has to re-invent the wheel," said Ena Prosser, director of BioResearch Ireland, the state technology transfer agency for life sciences research.

Selection of the participants is being finalized, said Dick Lenehan at Dublin-based Enterprise Ireland, the government agency responsible for developing indigenous companies. "Most of them are relatively small, technology-driven start-ups," he said. Any deals that get done, therefore, are likely to involve small, bite-sized chunks of intellectual property. Some, he said, may enhance a company's existing portfolio.

The initiative reflects the increasing emphasis on innovation within Irish life sciences firms, Lenehan said. In the past, he said, many companies focused on opening up new niches with established technologies, but the emphasis is beginning to shift increasingly toward more innovative R&D. "Around half of our companies are building their businesses on fundamental breakthroughs in scientific research. There is a change starting to take place," he said.

In a separate, though related, move, a new mentoring program also is in the offing, under which experienced U.S. biotechnology industry executives will "adopt" young Irish firms and provide them with ongoing advice. The idea, said Irish BioIndustry Association Director Matt Moran, is for emerging companies "to have a chance to have somebody who's been there, done that, to advise them."

Both initiatives reflect the increasing linkages between the fledgling Irish biotechnology industry and the U.S., following high-level exchanges between the countries at the Ireland-U.S. business summit in Washington in September and at the BioIreland conference in Dublin in November. (See BioWorld International, Nov. 6, 2002.)