Biosimulytics Secures European Innovation Council Accelerator Programme Funding
Biosimulytics, an Irish pharma software company and a spin-out from University College Dublin (UCD), is among four Irish companies, which between them have secured funding approval of up to €18 million in the latest competition round under Horizon Europe’s European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator Programme.
The EIC Accelerator programme supports individual SMEs, in particular start-ups and spin-out companies, to develop and scale up game-changing innovations. Approvals include grant funding of up to €2.5 million combined with an equity investment ranging from €0.5 million to €15 million in a blended finance offer.
Biosimulytics uses artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to dramatically improve drug development, with a fully customized HPC (high performance computing), AI, and cloud solution to rapidly serve the company’s growing volume of pharmaceutical customers worldwide.
The Biosimulytics technology shortens the time to market and reduces the risks for important developments in the pharmaceutical industry in getting from molecules to medicine (M2M) and is a key enabling technology for the new era of precision medicine.
Biosimulytics, which is headquartered at NovaUCD in Dublin, spun-out from the UCD School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering in 2019 and is also an Enterprise Ireland High-Potential Start-Up (HPSU) company.
Peter Doyle, CEO and Co-Founder, Biosimulytics said, “Today's announcement is truly a game changer for the global scaling of our unique pharmatech platform. For too long now, the process of getting from molecules to medicines in the pharmaceutical industry has been far too slow and expensive, with low success rates. The Biosimulytics platform, which combines AI neural networks, quantum physics and high-performance computing technologies to accurately simulate and predict the crystal structures of molecules, addresses a major headache and bottleneck in the drug development process and promises to dramatically improve the speed, cost and success of bringing new medicines to market to help save millions of lives worldwide.”
He added, “The EIC funding will make all the difference in achieving our full value potential by growing our team, our customer base and our revenues, accelerating our product roadmap and our time-to-market, and becoming fully investor-ready over the next few years. We are already a High Potential Start-Up client of Enterprise Ireland and their experience and guidance was a key factor in our EIC success, and their continued support is greatly appreciated.”
In this latest competition over 550 applications were submitted with 139 companies subsequently selected for interview resulting in a total of 51 funding awards to 17 countries. The 51 companies allocated funding will together receive up to €260 million in a combination of grants and equity investments.
Enterprise Ireland leads the National Support Network for Horizon Europe which helps entrepreneurs to compete and win funding in EIC competitions.
Leo Clancy, CEO, Enterprise Ireland said, “Today’s announcement is an endorsement of the wealth and depth of innovation arising out of the Irish research ecosystem. The funding allotted to these projects will allow them to continue to develop and streamline their product offering, helping to further elevate Ireland’s status as a global leader in healthcare solutions.”
The other three successful Irish companies in addition to Biosimulytics were, Luminate Medical, based in Galway; Hooke Bio, based in Clare, and Celtic Biotech, based in Dublin.
Leo Clancy added, “Biosimulytics, Hooke Bio and Luminate Medical are third level spin-outs that were previously supported by Enterprise Ireland’s Commercialisation Fund. The success of the four companies in this call reflects the direct support they receive at different stages of their journey from our research commercialisation, EIC, High Potential Start-Up and sector teams. Furthermore, it is particularly welcome to see that half of the successful projects have a female inclusive leadership team which supports Enterprise Ireland’s strategic ambition to increase the participation of women in entrepreneurship and business leadership.”
To date, Irish companies have secured approvals totalling €129 million under the EIC Programme since the beginning of Horizon Europe in 2021.
ENDS
21 June 2023
For further information contact Micéal Whelan, Communications and Media Relations Manager, UCD Research and Innovation, e: miceal.whelan@ucd.ie
Editors Notes
The EIC Accelerator Programme supports individual Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), in particular start-ups and spin-out companies to develop and scale up game-changing innovations. In some cases, small mid-caps (up to 500 employees) are supported.
The EIC Accelerator provides substantial financial support with:
- grant funding (non-dilutive) of up to €2.5 million for innovation development costs
- investments (direct equity investments) of up to €15 million managed by the EIC Fund for scale up and other relevant costs.
In addition, EIC selected companies receive coaching, mentoring, access to investors and corporates, and many other opportunities as part of the EIC community.
The EIC Programme now also includes EIC Pathfinder for earlier stage development of future technologies as well as EIC Transition for taking the next steps towards technical and commercial validation. Both of these programmes are upstream of the EIC Accelerator programme and have their own eligibility criteria. https://eic.ec.europa.eu/eic-funding-opportunities/eic-accelerator_en