Irish firm and US institute join forces on cervical cancer vaccines

IRISH company Biotrin International has joined forces with the National Cancer Institute in Washington DC to commercialise its cervical cancer vaccines.

The vaccine market will be worth 4 billion worldwide by 2010, according to industry estimates.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern made the announcement at the BioIreland 2006 Conference at UCD yesterday.

“The licensing agreement will enable Biotrin to produce tests for use in hospital laboratories and other medical facilities to determine the effectiveness and uptake of the recently launched human papilloma virus (HPV) cervical cancer vaccines,” he said.

“The technology licensing agreement between Biotrin International and the

National Institutes of Health in Washington DC is extremely important and the first of its kind in the world. Biotrin will play an important role in monitoring the effectiveness of the HPV cervical cancer vaccine in the general population. The HPV vaccine has the potential to cut levels of cervical cancer by up to 70%.”

There are approximately 200 new cases of cervical cancer and 70 deaths from cervical cancer every year in Ireland, according to research from the Irish BioIndustry Assocition.

Mr Ahern commended the work of Enterprise Ireland in establishing this relationship between the National Cancer Institute and Biotrin International and helping to broker the agreement.

The conference heard how the Government aims to maximise the creation of new commercially-focused biotechnology companies in Ireland and to nurture the development of early-stage biotech companies.

The Taoiseach also said there would be increased levels of investment in higher education institutions, world-class research teams will be built and the number of PhDs would be doubled.

“We will grow business expenditure on R&D to €2.5bn by 2013. This is in line with the terms of the EU’s Lisbon goals and will place Ireland in the vanguard of countries addressing knowledge issues,” he said.