Glantreo Winter 2008 Newsletter

Welcome to the Glantreo Winter 2008 email newsletter. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued interest in Glantreo, we hope you enjoy our newsletter, and all of us here at Glantreo would like to take this opportunity to wish you a Happy Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

Glantreo recive commercialisation award

Enterprise Irelands Industrial Technologies Annual Conference took place on Thursday 27th of November at the Charlton Hotel in Dublin. Dr Jimmy Devins TD, Minister for Science and Technology presented Glantreo's Dr John Hanrahan with an Industrial Technologies Commercialization Award for his work on development, commercialization and licensing of the project 'Mesoporous Silica Spheres for Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatrography'. This ground breaking technology was recently licensed to Glantreo Ltd by University COllege Cork (UCC).

The sub2sila™ technology is a unique processing technology that allows the production of a highly monodispersed sub 2 micron silica porous silica particles. The particles have applications in the High performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) arena and also in the next generation of HPLC termed Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography (UPLC).

The agreement has been reached following the completion of an initial feasibility study which demonstrated the ability of the sub2sila™ technology to achieve the performance characteristics required by Glantreo. Under the terms of the Licence Agreement, which were undisclosed, UCC will earn licence and fees, as well as royalties on Glantreos sales and sub-licensing revenues.

The sub2sila™ process allows the controlled synthesis of highly monodispersed silica particles in the 0.2-10 µm range. By simple control of the reaction parameters (temperature, reactant concentrations etc) appropriate sized particles can be synthesized. Several method currently exist for the production of sub 2 micron silica, however, the process developed at UCC offers a number of significant benefits namely:

1. a 100% yield of desired product compared to an industrial average of 8-10%
2. Highly monodispersed silica particles
3. Complete 'tunability' over particle and pore size
4. A simple and easy scalable process
5. No need for costly separation steps to achieve the desire size fraction.

Glantreo is currently in negotiations with a major player in the chromatography space where this technology will be utilised.

From initial interactions with several of the major OEMs in the HPLC/UPLC industry there seems to be a genuine interest in this technology. The high yield of mono dispersed particles is of major interest to these companies, and may offer significant savings in the cost of manufacturing chromatography columns. There are approximately 1.5 million HPLC columns sold each year, (average retail price ¤500.00). It is expected in 10 years time that 50% of the of the columns sold per annum will contain sub 2 micron silica. Therefore it can be envisioned that significant royalties could be generated from successful implementation of this sub 2 micron manufacturing process into a commercial entity.

Glantreo and Queens University Belfast (QUB) sign partnership deal

Glantreo and QUB were recently awarded a FUSION partnership grant, worth in excess of €100,000, via the cross border Intertrade Ireland Fusion Initiative. Glantreo’s academic partner in Northern Ireland is Dr Paul Nancarrow of the Chemical Engineering Department at Queens University Belfast. Speaking at a recent trip to Cork Dr Nancarrow was very excited at the prospect of working with Glantreo. The partnership will ring fence certain technologies being developed at the Chemical Engineering Department at QUB.

FUSION is InterTradeIreland’s all-island technology transfer initiative that gives companies access to the wealth of expertise and facilities in our universities and colleges across the island of Ireland, allowing them to make strategic advances in innovation. The FUSION programme initially develops and facilitates partnerships between companies with a technology need on one side of the border, and colleges or universities that can provide the required specialist expertise on the other side. The partners work collectively to plan a specific project that will solve a technology need within the company. A high calibre graduate is then employed to spearhead the project for a period of up to 2 years.