Local SME joins EU innovation leaders

A Galway start-up is one of four Irish small and medium-sized enterprises on a pan-European list of 141 selected for funding in the latest round of Horizon 2020.

Westway Health joins three Irish other Irish SMEs – Atturos, Evolution Environmental Services Ltd and TruePivot, all based in Dublin – who will each receive €50,000 to finance feasibility studies for new products that can disrupt the market.

They can also ask for up to three days of business coaching and after that may be considered for further financial support from the Commission worth up to €2.5 million.

Westway Health/Slainte Beoga Teoranta is involved in the development of non-antibiotic therapy for the treatment of bovine mastitis.

“The lack of effectiveness of antibiotics and the growing rise of bacteria resistant to antibiotics, such as MRSA, is a major concern,” explained Dr. Ruairi Friel CEO of Westway Health.

“The WHO has described this as an ‘increasingly serious threat to global public health’. As such, there is an urgent need for novel, effective treatments against bacteria,” he added.

So Westway Health, a start-up company from NUI Galway, is developing such a solution.

Based upon almost ten years of research from the laboratory of Prof Vincent O’Flaherty, at NUI Galway, they have developed and are commercialising a suite of non-antibiotic technologies effective at killing all microorganisms.

“These technologies have a range of applications in human health, animal health and for environmental sterilisation, in eliminating and eradicating microorganisms, such as bacteria, yeast and fungi. The lead product in their pipeline is for the treatment of bovine mastitis,” said Dr Friel.

Chief Scientific Officer, Prof Vincent O’Flaherty explained that current mastitis treatments involve antibiotics – and these are unsatisfactory.

“They are not always effective, bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics, and to avoid antibiotics entering the human food chain, the milk must be discarded during treatment and cannot be sold or consumed for a number of days afterwards.

“Our technology avoids these problems, allowing for a potentially effective zero withdrawal treatment, that is, allowing farmers to treat mastitis and sell their milk throughout treatment – becoming the world’s first such product,” he added.

The inclusion of these four Irish companies brings to 38 the total number of Irish SMEs funded so far under the SME Instrument (29 Phase 1 receiving €50,000 each and nine Phase 2 receiving up to €2.5 million each).