Cancer researcher Prof William Gallagher has won the NovaUCD 2011 Innovation Award for his successes in the commercialisation of intellectual property coming out of UCD research programmes.
His research has to date resulted in the formation of a UCD spin-out company, OncoMark, which currently employs 12 people at NovaUCD, seven invention disclosures, five priority patent applications, and one executed licence with another one pending.
A major focus of his research at the School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science at UCD has been on the identification and validation of candidate biomarkers – which indicate the therapeutic response of patients to treatments – of breast cancer and melanoma and the conversion of his research results into clinically relevant assays or tests which can help to improve the quality of life of cancer patients.
A company to support cancer drug development
Together with Stephen Penney, Gallagher set up OncoMark in 2007 to support cancer drug development through tissue-based biomarker development and validation. The company has already secured more than €3.5m in research funding from European Framework 7 (FP7) Programmes and has embarked on its own biomarker discovery programme while also in-licensing technologies for validation and product development.
OncoMark, which also provides digital pathology and tissue processing services to the pharma and biotech industry, plans to double its workforce at NovaUCD by 2013.
Gallagher has secured more than €17m in research funding as principal investigator within UCD from Science Foundation Ireland, the Irish Cancer Society, the Health Research Board of Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and the European Commission.
Article courtesy of Businessandleadership.com
