Collaborative Research – DCU & Oriel Marine
Lead Researcher:
Dr. Ronan P. Murphy
Oriel Marine Extracts is an Irish owned company employing six people and based in Port Oriel Clogherhead, Co. Louth. It is an award-winning sea salt company that has transformed into a life sciences company supplying global leaders in skincare, wound-care, burn-care and nutrition as a result of its collaborative research with Dublin City University (DCU).
In 2017 Oriel engaged the Murphy Group laboratory at DCU in an Innovation Partnership focused on skin-based research that discovered the benefit of Oriel’s proprietary deep-sea magnesium mineral complex in the treatment of burns. Having presented these findings to one of the leading companies in burn care, Waterjel Inc USA, DCU and Oriel realigned their research to undertake what would become an industry-changing study on the treatment of burns. Initial results from this study positioned Waterjel to present to the US Military and subsequently secure a 3 year contract for all burn gels and dressings to the US Military. This, in turn, resulted in Oriel and Waterjel signing Supply and Licence contracts.
The collaborative approach to the research between Oriel, Waterjel and Dr Ronan Murphy at DCU ensured a communications and product development strategy that led to developing a new research method to burn, biopsy, treat and monitor the healing process in real time at cell and molecular level. In less than two years, this collaboration took a project from concept to commercial success, filed multiple patents and issued exclusive licences to industry while also paving the way for the next stage of research.
The success of this project provided major benefits to the research group at DCU and has led to expansion of the Murphy Lab there and led to the development of a new research consortium focusing on cross disciplinary approaches to skin health and biology that includes national and international researchers and companies.
The TTO, DCU Invent, has supported Dr. Murphy in his collaboration with Oriel since its inception in 2015 having negotiated the Collaborative Research Agreements for the collaborative projects as well as having given their continuous support through providing access to DCU Invent facilities for business development, client engagement and corporate presentations.
Underpinning Funding Sources Include:
Science Foundation Ireland
Irish Research Council
Enterprise Ireland
Horizon 2020