Chief Executive Vivienne Williams switched from being a scientist to an entrepreneur when she became a co-founder of the company in 2006. Company revenues doubled last year despite the recession, are expected to do so again this year.
When a global pharmaceutical giant comes looking for the new technology produced by a small Irish start-up company, its a bit like the mountain coming to Mohammad. And for Dublin based Cellix it was also a bit like manna from heaven when AstraZeneca rang in 2006 to ask about the company's newly developed offering - an innovative biological research tool, used in drug testing that mimics the action of human veins.
"The call came out of the blue when we hadn't even started marketing. Astra Zeneca had found us on the internet," reveals company chief executive Vivienne Williams. AstraZeneca purchased a system and became the company's first customer. Three years down the road and Cellix also sells to two of the other top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the world. In 2006 Williams set up the company, along with fellow scientists Dmitry Kashanin and Frank O'Dowd, licensing technology from Trinity College which Williams and Kashanin has been involved in developing.
Seeing the commercial potential of the research Williams switched from being a scientist to an entrepreneur. There are other systems like theirs, but Cellix's system was the only microfluidic one, she explains. "It can handle tiny volumes of sample which makes it much more cost effective for companies."
Back in 2001 Williams and Kashanin has secured funding from Enterprise Ireland to commercialise the research. Five years later Cellix was incorporated and Williams because the first employee. In December 2006 Cellix raised €800,000 in venture capital from NCB Venture Capital in Dublin and OTC Asset Management in Paris.
"At this point we had already made our first sale to AstraZeneca and this proved to investors that there was an appetite for this technology," explains Williams. Signing up one global Pharma giant as a customer made it easier for the new company to find other clients in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. The company now sells to Biotie Therapies, Pfizer and Sanofi-Aventis as well as AstraZeneca. In more recent times it has begun targeting universities carrying out academic research and its customers in this area now include the Universities of Aberdeen, Liverpool, Reading, Dublin, Washington and the National University of Singapore.
Cellix now has six distributors in Europe, five in Asia and is also planning to sell through distributors in the US. Operating from and R&D facility at St James's Hospital in Dublin as well as a newly established manufacturing premises at the Trinity Enterprise Centre on Pearse Street, Cellix now employs a staff of eight, including one in a New York Office.
While the company does not disclose details of its turnover, Williams says revenues doubled last year and that despite the recession are expected to do so again this year. Wile some pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies have made decisions not to invest in new capital equipment, she says most have deferred, rather than cancelled plans to purchase new research systems.
These companies need to keep investing in new technology to stay in business she observes. Williams says that the growth in sales to academia has compensated for any drop in other markets and that the academic market is continuing to grow. She's particularly optimistic about the US market, where President Obama’s stimulus package is set to provide funding for university projects.
"Our technology has been included in a number of grant proposals which have now been submitted for funding in the academic area," she says, Having secured €1.1 million last year from the same investors who had provided funding in 2006, Cellix now aims to establish distributors in the US and to diversify the company product portfolio in partnership with other companies. Optimistic about cellix's future, Williams says that companies based on innovative R&D are capable of not only surviving but growing during a recession.
