Licensing of Technology
Through its Knowledge Transfer team NovaUCD has a growing portfolio of licensing opportunities which
will benefit the companies to whom the technology is licensed by making them more competitive, create new products, scale, generate employment and hopefully, with time, provide financial returns to the University and the inventors.
Poolbeg Pharma
In 2022 Poolbeg Pharma, a clinical stage infectious disease pharmaceutical company, signed an exclusive licence agreement with UCD, through NovaUCD, for a late preclinical stage vaccine candidate for Melioidosis.
Melioidosis, with no current approved vaccine available, is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei, commonly found in the soil and surface groundwater of many tropical and subtropical regions, with diverse clinical presentations including pneumonia and severe sepsis with multiple organ abscesses. Incidence of the disease is widespread in South-East Asia, Northern Australia and India, with climate change having a substantial impact on the spread of the disease to new areas such as Brazil.
There are an estimated 165,000 cases of Meliodosis each year and is associated with a fatality rate of up to 45%.
The vaccine candidate, which is being developed by Poolbeg as POLB 003, was invented following many years of research by Associate Professor Siobhán McClean, UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science, and was a recipient of a Wellcome Trust Award to aid its development.
Associate Professor McClean completed some of the original research to identify the antigens associated with the Melioidosis vaccine candidate at TU Dublin.
Pictured at UCD are Associate Professor Siobhán McClean and Dr Jeremy Skillington, CEO, Poolbeg Pharma.
