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RemedyBio, a nanoscale biotechnology company based in Dublin, has received €10.5m in EIC financing to continue its work on combatting Covid-19.
Dublin-based nanoscale biotechnology company RemedyBio has closed €8m in equity financing from the European Commission, completing a €10.5m funding award.
The Dublin City University (DCU) spin-out company was awarded funds last year through European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator and has now received equity financing through the newly launched EIC Fund.
The funding will enable RemedyBio to continue developing its Rapid Pandemic Response Platform and its Nanoreactor Immune Discovery Platform.
The company’s tech is designed to rapidly and simultaneously analyse millions of single immune cells from an individual sample. It has already contributed to scientific understanding of Covid-19, after its rapid response platform flagged powerful new antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 from the immune system of Covid-19 patients.
It is now being tuned to respond to new variants and future diseases, with the aim of creating a rapid passive therapy against new strains of Covid-19 and to help control future pandemics by making therapies for new viruses available in less than 90 days.
Dan Crowley, CEO of RemedyBio said he was delighted the company received funding from the EIC.
“It fills an important financing gap, supporting European companies with innovative technologies to create deep scientific programs and commercial partnerships. In our case, this will drive transformative biological insights and new therapy discoveries.”
Crowley added that the funding would enable the company to forge new collaborative working relationships with pharmaceutical partners and clinical research groups.
Richard Stokes, DCU’s commercialisation director and CEO of DCU Invent, said the university was fortunate to have worked with RemedyBio’s chief scientist and co-founder, Dr Paul Leonard, for seven years.
“The European EIC grant funding and equity funding are innovative mechanisms to support the development of breakthrough technologies like this and they complement the very welcome Disruptive Technology Innovation Funding provided by the Irish Government,” Stokes added. “We look forward to other innovative DCU projects availing of these funding schemes.”
The EIC Fund was established last year as a breakthrough initiative of the European Commission to make direct equity and quasi-equity investments in European high-impact and deep-tech start-ups and scale-ups.
It invests in companies from any sector across all EU countries and countries linked to the EU research and innovation initiative Horizon 2020.
Heidi Kakko, member of the investment committee of the EIC Fund, said: “We are glad the EIC Fund is supporting this breakthrough company, which is playing a pioneering role in creating new solutions in immune therapeutics. This shows how the EU contribution is crucial in tackling the Covid-19 response.”
