EXERGYN
Enterprise Ireland landed in hot water with its c.€1.2m funding grant aid in June 2020 to Exergyn, but the state agency is doing so willingly. Exergyn has developed an engine that can run on low-grade hot water, a common waste constituent in power and heat production. Its emission-free heat pump has been a long time in development, but if the technology works it could be very valuable.
Exergyn was founded by Alan Healy, Kevin O’Toole and Barry Cullen in 2012. The trio have secured considerable funding to commercialise the research, including Horizon 2020 funding of €2.5m in 2015. In total, Healy (52) says that Exergyn has raised over €20m in equity, grants and development funds since it was established. Though the company is pre-revenue, the proof of its endeavours is over 100 patent filings.
Commercial partner Carrier Global, an American multinational, is a funder of the business, and has recently expressed an interest in buying the venture, according to reports. According to The Currency, the board of directors is now mulling a trade sale or an auction process. Non-voting shareholders favour the auction route, with one of them stating: “We are concerned at the possibility that the company may be sold outside of an auction process for many millions of euro less than it might otherwise achieve.”
Not all life sciences state aid is channelled through the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund. Dublin medtech company Deciphex received a €500,000 shot in the arm from Enterprise Ireland last June to help fund its R&D programme. The business has been tapping investors for considerable sums in recent years, including c.€2m in 2019 and c.€5.5m in 2020.
Founded in 2017 by Donal O’Shea (50) and Mark Gregson (60), Deciphex’s software uses artificial intelligence to help analyse slides with tissue specimens more quickly and accurately. The business specialises in such analyses for human gastrointestinal and toxicologic pathology. Its flagship toxicology testing product is called Patholytix, and the company also operates a digital pathology scanning service for digitising slides.
O’Shea was a biotech academic in DCU before becoming an entrepreneur. He established Slidepath in 2003 as a DCU spinout, which also worked in the digital slide and clinical data management space. That business was acquired by cell imaging and analysis company Genetix in 2009 for a reported deal consideration of c.$5m.
Along with Enterprise Ireland, investors include Irrus Investments, Act Venture Capital and angel investors through HBAN’s medtech syndicate. In 2020, Deciphex partnered with Charles River Laboratories to distribute Patholytix, and the American firm also ponied up €3m investment.
Taxpayers also invested €300,000 in the venture in 2019, when the company booked a loss of €760,000, bringing accumulated losses to €1.4m. Speaking after last year’s big fundraiser, O’Shea said Deciphex solutions are now being used by almost all of the top ten global pharma companies.
RADISENS DIAGNOSTICS
Radisens Diagnostics in Cork has been a slow burn for founder Jerry O’Brien. The venture was established in 2009 with the aim of improving management of high-cost chronic diseases for patients and their care providers. The company started out developing a blood test device to monitor patients with diabetes and other co-occurring conditions or complications in primary-care settings.
According to the Radisens website, the focus now is developing a realtime point-of-care ferritin test in blood donor clinics to identify iron-depletion prior to donation. Measuring ferritin in at-risk blood donors before they donate can identify iron depletion, in which case the donor might be advised to consider their options.
The technology under development is complicated, involving the design of cartridges based on centrifugal microfluidic principles, hardened steel tool design, and point-of-care reader development. As Radisens has progressed, it has buttressed IP protection with over 20 patents, according to the company.
The operating company’s balance sheet was transformed in 2019, when a net deficit of €590,000 at end 2018 became net worth of €670,000 at end 2019, despite the venture booking a loss of €1m through the year. The reason was that various prior year development costs, totalling €2m, were capitalised as intangible assets whereas previously they had been accounted for through the P&L.
Prompting the change in accounting policy was the December 2019 announcement that Radisens had been successful in its application for DTIF funding, in a partnership with Irish Manufacturing Research, Poly Pico Technologies and Trinity College Dublin.
Of the €7m award of taxpayer funding to this consortium, €2.9m was granted to Radisens in June 2020. Last October, Radisens announced the commencement of the ‘FerrTest’ project, which aims to advance its dried reagent, microfluidic cartridge and reader technologies and develop a scalable cartridge manufacturing process.