Wyeth to establish a Bio-therapeutic Drug Discovery Research Facility

Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin TD today (Tuesday 20^th December 2005) announced that Wyeth Research, a division of Wyeth Corporation - one of the largest research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare product companies in the world - is to establish a bio-therapeutic drug discovery research facility in Ireland, with the support of IDA Ireland. Located at the Conway Institute in University College Dublin the facility will comprise 12 top class research scientists focusing on product discovery, pre-clinical research and drug discovery technology development.

Minister Martin said, “This facility, being established by Wyeth Research, a global leader in biotechnology, is a significant endorsement of Ireland as a location for drug discovery research. Investment in this type of research is at the strategic core of what companies like Wyeth do and as such it is a highly significant step for the company to take in Ireland. It will demonstrate to the international pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical community throughout the world the calibre of this country’s talents and abilities in the field of leading edge Research and Development”.

“This investment is exactly what the Government’s policy and IDA Ireland’s strategy in Research and Development is aiming to achieve in the Biopharmaceutical sector. The backward integration from manufacturing into the various stages of the R&D chain and ultimately into core new product discovery research is the key to establishing long-term sustainable businesses in Ireland.” The Minister added.

Wyeth Research Ireland will be a wholly integrated protein drug discovery and development operation. It will utilise advanced new technologies to discover the next generation of therapeutic biopharmaceuticals in three distinct product families – antibodies, fusion proteins and native biologics. The work will focus on five main disease areas – inflammation; oncology; women’s health and musculoskeletal biology; cardiovascular and metabolic disease; and neuroscience. It will enable the creation of significant intellectual property, which will remain in the ownership of Wyeth’s Irish operation.

The results of Wyeth Research Ireland’s work will feed into the Wyeth Grange Castle Campus in Dublin, – which is one of the world’s largest integrated biopharmaceutical facilities - for product and process development. This will make the Grange Castle Campus fully integrated from discovery through development to full-scale manufacture.

"Wyeth is delighted to be establishing a biotherapeutic research laboratory at the Conway Institute at University College Dublin. This collaboration reaffirms our commitment to Ireland, and builds on our capacity for development of biotechnology therapies that will undoubtedly lead to long term benefits to patient health," says Frank Walsh, Ph.D. Executive Vice President and Head of Wyeth Discovery Research.  "Building upon our major manufacturing investment in Grange Castle we can continue to maximize the opportunity for interaction between academic and Wyeth scientists by taking the innovative step of placing a new Wyeth Discovery lab within the Conway Institute itself."

UCD, Vice-President for Innovation and Corporate Partnerships, Professor Catherine Godson, said that the Wyeth move was a vindication of the success of the Government’s investment in research infrastructure at UCD. “The initiative proves the value of a university campus as a place of research for industry. We see this as an opportunity for UCD Conway Institute and critical to our plans for the development of the National Institute of Bioprocess Research and Training (NIBRT). The founding principle of the UCD Conway Institute was to support the development of the pharma industry in Ireland. The arrival of Wyeth on the Belfield campus builds on our existing successful relationships and I hope, is a precursor to much bigger collaborations.”