UCD: Celtic Catalysts captures €500,000 investment

Celtic Catalysts, a spin-out from University College Dublin’s School of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, has secured €500,000 funding from existing investor 4th Level Ventures and private investors.

Formed in 2000, Celtic Catalysts specialises in ‘P-chiral’ technology, which allows pharmaceutical companies to manufacture drugs cost-effectively. The company has now secured over €2.5 million in investment from 4th Level Ventures, Enterprise Ireland, Údarás na Gaeltachta and Business Expansion Scheme investors.

Dr Brian Kelly, CEO, Celtic Catalysts, said: “This investment will assist Celtic Catalysts in closing some very exciting near-term opportunities. Due to further projected growth, the company will seek to raise additional capital to enable it to develop scale-up production facilities to manufacture bulk quantities of its products and to address additional high-value opportunities.”

As well as product sales, Celtic Catalysts has already signed research alliance agreements with a number of multinational pharmaceutical companies. These agreements allow Celtic Catalysts to use its technology and expertise to solve problems encountered by pharmaceutical companies during the manufacturing process.

Celtic Catalysts, which is based at NovaUCD (the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre at University College Dublin), won the NovaUCD 2008 Innovation Award, and was international winner of the Rising Star Award at the BioIndustry Association (Scotland) Thistle Bioscience Forum 2008.