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DeepVerge, which recently expanded its AI facility in Cork, will use the funding to produce automated water testing kits to identify viruses.
Scientific research company DeepVerge has been awarded €750,000 in funding by Enterprise Ireland to detect Covid-19 in wastewater.
The Irish-founded, London-listed company will use the funding to secure contracts both in Ireland and internationally which will help fund its ongoing development of automated water testing kits that can identify Covid-19 and other diseases.
The funding is part of a larger €1.8m project to accelerate the design, assembly and mass production of a range of infectious disease and pathogen detection instruments, creating new instruments (as opposed to retrofits) capable of being mass produced in different sizes.
The water kits have been tested at the company’s AI facility in Fermoy, Co Cork as well as its other locations including the US, UK, China and India.
According to DeepVerge CEO, Gerard Brandon, the funding will enable the company to “meet the demand of not just the industrial-scale Covid-19 pandemic response equipment but to reduce the size and lower the cost of early warning disease-monitoring equipment”.
The government support through Enterprise Ireland will help the company to “move quickly” to produce instruments for automated monitoring of disease pathogens in large wastewater treatment plants as well as smaller buildings such as hospitals, schools, offices and buildings.
DeepVerge’s diagnostic division, which is located in York in the UK, has formed a deeper collaboration with York-based biotechnology company Aptamer Group for the development of a range of optimers which can bind viruses in drinking water, including influenza A, influenza B, E coli, poliovirus and SARS-CoV-2.
Dr Aaron Tolly, CEO of Aptamer Group, commented, “We are really pleased to enable DeepVerge’s increased testing capabilities for a broader range of viral targets in both wastewater and drinking water with our Optimer platform.”
Earlier this year, DeepVerge expanded its Co Cork facility, creating 60 new jobs in highly skilled areas such as epidemiology, physics and data science.
The company was founded in 2016. It specialises in the identification and analysis of micro-organisms using the internet of things, AI and data analytics.
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