Mayo Clinic Forms Collaboration with Enterprise Ireland

The Mayo Clinic is joining forces with Enterprise Ireland, the Irish enterprise development agency, to advance medtech innovation stemming from the clinic.

The five-year collaboration will provide an alternative source of funding for translational medical research, especially significant at a time when U.S. funding for research is challenging to obtain. Enterprise Ireland has committed up to $16 million in the agreement.

“This collaboration bridges a financial gap for translational research,” said Greg Gores, M.D., executive dean for research at Mayo Clinic. “It provides funding in between the early-stage basic research and the stage when a technology is ready for the marketplace. In the U.S., this stage is expensive and difficult to fund. We are providing the technologies and Enterprise Ireland the funding. Both of us are contributing to technology advancement.”

The Mayo Clinic is focusing on innovations that make it easier for patients to be diagnosed or treated. The development of one technology is already underway at National University of Ireland, Galway (NUI.G). The inventor, Vijay Singh, M.B.B.S., a gastroenterologist at Mayo Clinic in Arizona, developed a device to treat acute pancreatitis, a disease in which the pancreas is rapidly damaged, causing excruciating pain and often resulting in prolonged hospitalization or sometimes death. Experts at NUI.G are currently preparing the device for human clinical trials, which will be conducted by the university.

“This relationship exemplifies our capabilities to improve medicine and our commitment to be of service globally,” said John Noseworthy, M.D., president and CEO of the Mayo Clinic. “It provides a unique way of furthering the research and development of innovations that have high potential to make a difference in patient care and alleviate the burdens of human disease.”

Welcoming the agreement, Ireland’s Prime Minister An Taoiseach Enda Kenny T.D., said, “This agreement between Mayo Clinic U.S and Enterprise Ireland is highly significant from an economic perspective and builds on an Irish connection with Mayo Clinic extending back to the 19th century, when the founders of the Mayo Clinic, brothers Will and Charlie Mayo, attended the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland. Ireland is delighted to support the work of the Mayo Clinic to develop medical technologies that will benefit patients worldwide and this project fits well with the medical technology strategy supported by the Government’s Action Plan for Jobs. There is great potential for job creation in the 10 ‘spin-out’ companies Enterprise Ireland aims to create from this collaboration.”

Mayo will propose technologies, which will be judged on merit by Enterprise Ireland. Research teams in Irish universities and academic institutes will use funding from Enterprise Ireland to further develop and commercialize the chosen technologies, including engineering and clinical trials. Manufacturing and distribution would occur when companies are formed around the resulting products.

“Enterprise Ireland’s Commercialisation Fund is unique in its ability to support the development of a novel technology into a product,” noted Dr. Keith O’Neill, Enterprise Ireland’s director of Lifesciences commercialization. “Enterprise Ireland will work with the Mayo Clinic to create new companies around these world-class technologies. As part of this agreement, some of these new companies may also establish a presence in Minnesota, close to the Mayo Clinic, benefiting the local economy there, as well as in Ireland.”