A spin-out from the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), Orbsen Therapeutics will partner with Birmingham University.
Orbsen Therapeutics, a spin-out from the Regenerative Medicine Institute at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), will partner with Birmingham University for €6m ($8.3m) Merlin project, funded through the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), to develop a cell therapy for the inflammatory liver disease Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis.
Merlin will advance Orbsen’s proprietary cell therapy to a Phase 2a clinical trial in patients with inflammatory liver disease. The project will evaluate the therapy in four different research laboratories across Europe and culminate in the clinical trial of the therapy.
It is the spin-out’s fourth success in attracting FP7 funding, making them one of Ireland’s most successful private companies in this funding programme. Orbsen is now connected to 23 global collaborators. A total of €1m ($1.4m) of the funding will go directly to Orbsen over the course of the project’s four-year period.
Merlin, an acronym for mesynchymal stem cells to reduce liver inflammation, is led by professor Phil Newsome, clinical director of the Birmingham University Stem Cell Centre. FP7 is a programme that bundles all research-related EU initiatives together under a common roof playing a crucial role in reaching the union’s goals of growth, competitiveness and employment.
Brian Molloy, CEO of the company, said: “Orbsen has secured substantial amounts of research funding in the last 18 months which will further validate our product and bring us through to a ‘first in man’ clinical trial in 2015 and 2016. Our model has always focused on putting the ‘science first’ and we have successfully used that approach to develop a technology that could potentially position us and indeed Ireland at the leading edge of European cell therapy development.”