Pennsylvania-based West Pharmaceutical Services is to make a 'strategic investment' in Dublin healthcare company Latch Medical, which is developing new approaches to administering vaccines and other medicines.
Latch Medical was spun out of a UCD incubator by co-founders Ronan Byrne and Nicky Bertollo in 2019.
It’s focused on the development of the ‘Pharma Latch’ drug and vaccine delivery platform, which looks to offer the benefits of intradermal delivery in a simple and highly cost effective manner.
Its approach offers two delivery device platforms that allow for intradermal delivery of drugs and vaccines “with rapid, consistent dosing”, says the company, adding that the “technology anchors securely to the skin and uses either hollow or coated micro-needles to deliver and disperse drug and vaccine payloads”.
According to Latch, its technology is low cost “and can facilitate higher drug loads than microneedle technologies developed in the past, requiring minimal training for clinicians to use”.
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West’s senior director of R&D, Cormac Ashe, said: “West’s investment in Latch advances our leadership in innovation through a dedicated focus on the needs of patients.
“The methods by which medicines are delivered to patients continue to evolve to meet their desire for ease of use and effectiveness. Latch’s innovative intradermal delivery technology fits well into this strategy.”
Latch is based at NovaUCD in Belfield, and investors include Atlantic Bridge and Enterprise Ireland. West will take a minority ownership stake in Latch Medical. The investment amount and the stake size have not been disclosed.
Latch chief executive Ronan Byrne stated: “We have put our extensive experience of skin biomechanics and understanding of the challenges of intradermal delivery into the development of Pharma Latch. It is a novel technology that can replace traditional injections and infusions and look to realise the potential of intradermal delivery.
“With this investment from West, we can rapidly increase the impact of our technology.”
West employs about 10,000 people at 50 sites globally, specialises in injectable solutions and services. Turnover in 2021 was €2.7 billion.
The company employs c.1,000 people in Ireland, with a manufacturing and development centre in Dublin that specialises in providing device design, development and manufacturing services for pharmaceutical and med-tech customers, and also functions as a global medical device R&D centre.
During the Covid pandemic, West scaled up its Waterford plant’s working schedules, supplying millions of rubber stoppers to more than a dozen global customers that were used to package billions of vaccine doses in multi-dose vials.
For this, the company received a Global Public Service Award from the Ireland-US Council.
