Enterprise Ireland
Annual Report and Accounts 2006
Annual Report and Accounts 2006
The early stage biological instrumentation company founded in 2004 has already commercialised its first products, made key sales in the US and Sweden and completed an €800,000 investment round.
The university spin-out is now driving forward with full-scale commercialisation of its research ideas and an expansion that will take annual exports to €3 million by 2009.
Cellix specialises in developing and manufacturing instruments that help scientists test and accelerate the discovery of new drugs.
Its pioneering technology mimics the flow of blood through human capillaries (blood vessels), providing a plastics simulation platform for determining how a drug might react within the body. This allows major pharmaceutical and biotechnology organisations to make vital decisions about expensive clinical trials both faster and more cheaply.
The high potential start-up stemmed from a collaboration between the physics and medicine departments at Trinity College Dublin.
Both the technology and the company came about as a result of work by postgraduate research students Vivienne Williams, now Cellix's CEO and Dmitry Kashanin, now CTO.
Supported at all stages by Enterprise Ireland's Commercialisation Fund, which encourages and facilitates the commercial exploitation of knowledge and high-quality applied research, Cellix has steadily developed its potential.
The seed capital raised is being used to finance the company's continued R&D and expansion into international markets.
Vivienne Williams says:
"The research does have great commercial potential. We've been able to sell to the prestigious National Institutes of Health in the US, the principal health research agency of the Federal Government."
Cellix has also sold to global pharma giant AstraZeneca and will continue pressing for exports with experience gained from the CEO's participation on Enterprise Ireland's International Selling Programme.
Vivienne Williams continues:
"Our focus now is on developing a network of distributors to drive sales. Initially this will be in Britain, Scandanavia, France and Germany. We also want to establish a presence on the east coast in the States. These are key markets with a high concentration of pharmaceutical and biotechnology activity."
Cellix is based in an Enterprise Ireland bioincubation unit in St James's Hospital Dublin, one of six established countrywide to foster the growth of Irish biotechnology companies.
www.cellixltd.com (link opens in a new browser window)
