Inside stories of coronavirus battlers Aerogen, Hibergene, Open Orphan and Nearform

Ireland was placed sixth last week in a list of nations ranked on their response to the Covid-19 crisis in terms of innovation. The league table was compiled by StartupBlink, a Swiss-Israeli company that collates data on start-ups; the United Nations-backed Health Innovation Index; the Moscow Agency of Innovations; and partners such as tech database provider Crunchbase.

While the Republic has punched above its weight largely because of multi- national medical device firms, Enterprise Ireland says more than 100 of its client companies are responding to the crisis. Here, we step inside four Irish businesses that are seeking to make a material contribution in the fight against the deadly spread of Covid-19.

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By Brian Carey and Conor McMahon

ANDREW Catchpole heads London’s hVIVO lab — pioneering testing of new Covid-19 vaccines.

The 44-year-old doctor said: “We have received a massive response from volunteers to take part in human testing with a non-deadly coronavirus.

“Normally 200 would respond on our website in a week. This time we had 20,000 in a few days. People want to help.

“We are trying to find a model that will speed up vaccine testing.

“At the moment we are setting up the trial and testing the virus to ensure it is safe, before we put it into people. We will take healthy volunteers and inoculate them with a virus, making them sick but in a very controlled setting.

“We are putting in lots of hours to get this running.”

By Grant Rollings, Kate Ferguson, Ben Leo

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