THE 'next big thing' to come out of the Northern Ireland economy may hail from Coleraine - that's if local innovator Dr. David Gibson has anything to do with it.
David, Founder of Proteocypher, is among 10 finalists in Northern Ireland Science Park’s £25k Award – a flagship entrepreneurial programme designed to flush out the region’s hottest intellectual property then transform it into a commercialised, marke
t-ready products.
David’s shortlisted idea is designed to help reduce drug costs and deliver individually tailored health care. Proteocypher assesses global protein expression profiles of blood, body fluid and tissue biopsy samples from patients with a range of autoimmune diseases, in particular arthritis.
It can interpret these protein ‘fingerprints’ or biomarker levels as an indicator of responsiveness to treatment.
David said: “The awards are a great opportunity to showcase our product. We have put in an enormous amount work to get this far and we are very hopeful that we can go all the way. Nevertheless, the value of this award is that, win or lose, we ought to have a market-ready product at the end of the process, which is extremely exciting.”
The overall winner can expect to receive a top prize of £10,000, and those who make it through to the final 10 will receive £600 for participating in the competition.
Steve Orr, Director of NISP CONNECT, said: “The competition is designed to shake out innovation from our local research base – across every town and townland in Northern Ireland – and to support them in every way possible. We want to tool these guys up for the marketplace and they’re really responding to us. In all respects, this has an extremely exciting awards year.”
Mark Cunningham, Manager of Business Banking at the Bank of Ireland, voiced his hope that David’s story of local innovation can inspire school children and young people from Coleraine who are going to university for the first time to be similarly creative and determined in realising their ambitions.
“This is an extremely exciting time to be associated with the Northern Ireland research base and all the teams must be congratulated for getting to this stage in the process,” he added.
The awards process culminates with the £25K awards event which is set to be held at the Science Park’s newly refurbished Pump House on September 25.
The full article contains 403 words and appears in Coleraine Times newspaper.
