Myriad Secure €4.3m for Irish Medical Company

Onkimmune was founded in 2015 with the goal of developing novel anti-cancer therapies using Natural Killer (NK) cells.  NK cells are one of the body’s strongest defences against cancer, being one of the most tumour cytotoxic components of the human immune system. The company’s strategy is to develop novel, off the shelf, NK cell-based therapies for cancer. Further, the company is seeking to enhance these NK cells through the introduction of a series of genetic modifications, creating a technology platform that can be tailored to multiple cancers.

The opportunity:

Marc Greatrex, Director of Grants at Myriad Associates was introduced to Prof Michael O’Dwyer, CSO at Onkimmune at the National University of Ireland in Galway in August 2018. Michael was interested to learn whether their CAR-NK project would be suitable for public funding to which Marc quickly highlighted the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund as a great fit for the project and for Onkimmune.

The Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund is a €500 million fund established under Project Ireland 2040 and is run by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation with administrative support from Enterprise Ireland. Marc and Michael started with creating an executive summary for the Expression of Interest and Michael recruited a best in class consortium of NUI Galway, Centre for Cell Manufacturing and Janssen Sciences Ireland UC, Part of Johnson and Johnson.

The process:

Myriad Associates helped Onkimmune put together their expression of interest towards this fund which was a 20-page document covering project context, solution, impacts upon National Strategic Outcomes (NSOs) in Project Ireland 2040, project deliverables and business plan.

"We were delighted when the project and Onkimmune were shortlisted by the DTIF and asked to prepare a full stage 2 application."

Marc Greatrex, Myriad Associates

Again, Myriad Associates helped Onkimmune put together a full stage application starting with an executive summary along with the same world-class consortium from the Expression of Interest.

The full stage application comprised of a major consortium application of 25 pages with separate budgets and technical appendix from each consortium partner.

The reward:

Following the submission of the documents and subsequent face to face interview with Department of Business, Enterprise & Innovation and administrative support from Enterprise Ireland – Onkimmune with their consortium partners were successful and were one of 27 other projects shortlisted by the DTIF.

The total funding approved for the project is €4.3m, over 3 years to 2021 with the project starting in April 2019.

"Marc and the Myriad team are such pros, his work ethic and attention to detail coupled with his strategy guidance is so compelling, his results speak for themselves, it can't be all down to luck.”

Tony Killarney, Co-Founder, Onkimmune

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