Ireland: €362,000 grant for cancer drug development

Research grant

EiRx Therapeutics plc of Cork, Ireland, said the development agency Enterprise Ireland has agreed to fund the research on new cancer drugs through a collaboration with Professor Anita Maguire, Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at University College Cork.

The collaboration will involve establishing a medicinal chemistry team in Cork to optimise compounds emerging from the company’s drug discovery platform and advance them towards clinical trials.

The tie-up with Maguire, director of the university’s Analytical & Biological Chemistry Research Facility, has attracted funding from Enterprise Ireland’s Innovation Partnership scheme. The €362,000 will be boosted by EiRx, which will put €139,000 into the collaboration.

The deal gives EiRx access to medicinal chemistry skills and facilities. Maguire will lead in the scientific management and leadership of the research programme, with EiRx contributing a dedicated cancer biologist and management input. The collaboration will work on optimisation of tumour-targeting compounds that have been shown to initiate apoptosis (programmed cell death) in cancer cells. Any drug candidates resulting will then be advanced to formal preclinical and clinical evaluation.

Novel intellectual property generated by the collaboration will be jointly held by the partners. EiRx will assume responsibility for product development beyond the lead optimisation stage, and will pay success-based development milestones of up to Euro 3 million per new therapeutic candidate, plus royalties on sales, in return for exclusive, worldwide rights.