Illumina Ventures announced the two winners of the inaugural competition designed to recognise high-potential start-ups.
UCD’s Nax Bioscience and TCD’s Imragen were today (16 June) awarded the top spot at the inaugural Irish Genomics Business Plan Competition, which is an initiative established to identify and support high-potential genomics-focused start-ups and research ventures in Ireland’s life sciences ecosystem.
Illumina Ventures, which announced the winners, is an independently managed venture capital firm that is focused on genomics and precision health investing and aims to strengthen the genomics innovation landscape in Ireland.
Nax Bioscience is a deep-tech life science start-up that focuses primarily on improving the efficiency of next generation sequencing. By developing an innovative nucleic acid extraction technology, Nax aims to ensure higher input quality that delivers more reliable, cost-effective sequencing results.
Leading the Nax Bioscience team are, Dr Jaythoon Hassan, of the National Virus Reference Laboratory at UCD, professor Michael Gilchrist from the UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and Edward Simons, a commercial lead. The multi-disciplinary project is supported by the Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Fund and is preparing for spin-out in early 2027.
