The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland is expanding its presence in the burgeoning medtech sector, writes DICK AHLSTROM
THE ANNOUNCEMENT that the prestigious Cleveland Clinic Innovations centre has opted to make its first foreign financial investment in Ireland once more highlights the growth in the Irish medtech sector.
The deal builds on the investment link with Dublin-based i360Medical, itself a spin-out from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).
For the college itself it represents a further accolade in its 228-year history and its role in the burgeoning medtech centre.
At the helm of these developments is the RCSI’s new director of research Prof Ray Stallings. He has set goals to increase levels of research, achieve closer collaborations with other higher education institutions and continue to assemble interdisciplinary teams within the college, but at the end of the day it is still all about the patient. He wants to see research translating into better diagnostics, better treatments, and better quality of care. “All of our work is translational so it is patient-centred,” he says.
He took up his new position at RCSI on October 1st, replacing the retiring Prof John Kelly. He also holds the chair of cancer genetics at the college and is programme leader in cancer genetics at the Children’s Research Centre at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin. He has a wealth of experience here and in the US.
Originally from Texas, he completed undergraduate and masters degrees at Texas AM and a PhD in genetics at the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Over the next few years he worked in a number of leading medical research institutions in Texas, at UCD and at Crumlin, the universities of Pittsburgh and California and at the Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston.
Stalling is author and co-author of over 150 journal articles, books and book chapters and has built an international reputation in the area of cancer genomics. His focus is on the development of novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment of childhood cancers.
He knows the RCSI’s systems as he assumes his new role, having held a research chair there for the past five years. And he is full of praise for the medical research being pursued by his colleagues. “There is great work being done and the research is being placed in high impact journals,” he says. “That is how you build an international reputation. It is all based on publication output and the quality of publications.”
And yet the research has to have a purpose and for the RCSI this is to improve the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases. For this reason the goal is to keep the research translational by maintaining strong links between what clinicians are experiencing in the hospital context and what the college’s research units are doing in the lab.
The clinicians see needs arising when working with patients, a faster way to diagnose a disease or the presence of an infection, less invasive testing, more effective drugs, better surgical procedures. They express these needs to researchers who respond by applying their expertise in medical chemistry, physiology and biochemistry. Their subsequent discoveries are then returned to the clinical setting to advance medical practice.
RCSI has 859 staff and about 340 are working in research as PhD students, technicians and as principal investigators (PIs) who lead research teams. There are about 100 PIs working there in “several different streams of research”, says Stallings. These include “lab bench to bedside” research in areas like cancer, neuroscience, respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, medicinal chemistry, inflammation and immunology, bioengineering and regenerative science, drug design, population healthcare and medical education.
RCSI is the national training body for surgery in Ireland and has nearly 4,000 students and its “noble purpose” statement states: “Building on our heritage in surgery, we will enhance human health through endeavour, innovation and collaboration in education, research and service.”
It commands a sizeable research income which during the 2011-12 academic year will reach €10.4 million. A lot of this comes via research grants, Stallings says, and the college contributes at least 30 per cent of the overhead funding needed to provide space and equipment. RCSI is a not-for-profit organisation and relies on income from student fees, rental income from a number of properties it holds and grant funding.
Science Foundation Ireland, the Health Research Board and the Irish Research Council are key sources of grants, but these are then used to “leverage” international funding for the college, Stallings says. This includes money from the EU’s science budget Framework Programme 7, from the European Research Council, the US National Institutes of Health and from private foundations.
It maintains an innovation agenda that parallels that of the Government, to see research discoveries providing an impetus for company formation, product development and job creation. “We are aligned with national research strategy to create jobs that will provide high quality employment,” he says.
To this end the college set up a tech transfer office in 2008 that has seen three spin-outs opening: SurgaColl Technologies, involved in tissue engineering; KelAda Pharmachem, for medical chemical synthesis; and most recently i360Medical.
Over the past few years the college has also built up its international presence with the opening of RCSI campuses in Bahrain and in Malaysia, but this has proved controversial for the college in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Protests against the regime in Bahrain led to the arrest of medical students at the RCSI campus there.
Prof Stallings “can’t comment” on the political issues involved but says that the college’s campus there run “very smoothly”. The college issued a statement saying it regretted the decision of the courts in Bahrain to uphold the sentencing of the medics.
RCSI has urged the Bahraini government to show humanity, withdraw these sentences and free medics who have been or are about to be imprisoned. RCSI noted in a statement: “Everyone who has a knowledge and affection for the Kingdom of Bahrain is greatly affected by the events of the last 18 months. In Ireland, we have a unique experience in the context of conflict resolution. Our own national story tells us that this will not be resolved quickly.”
RCSI is not willing to disengage with Bahrain however. “RCSI will continue to contribute to the future of Bahrain by providing high quality medical and nursing education in a non-sectarian environment to our more than 1,000 students.”
Despite the controversy, Prof Stallings wants to see more internationalisation in what the college is seeking to achieve. “We have an international perspective with international campuses and a highly multicultural main campus,” he says. There is a commonality of degrees across the campuses including MD, MSc and PhD programmes. “This is where research intersects the educational ambitions of the college,” he says.
Locally, he has set increased university collaboration as a “major goal” as director of research. “I am also very keen to promote multidisciplinary research,” he adds, with teams that might include a biochemist, an engineer, a mathematician and a clinician. “It is really important to try to build on the teams.” You need a base of basic research capability but the clinicians know what the patients need and this can be delivered by blending expertise from a range of fields, he argues.
