Investegate |Poolbeg Pharma plc Announcements | Poolbeg Pharma plc: Intention to Float on AIM investegate.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from investegate.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
What happened the Creeslough man who left school early?
THE founder of an Irish pharmaceutical services company, which has begun trials on a new Covid-19 nasal spray vaccine is Donegal man Cathal Friel.
Mr Friel (57) from Creeslough was a finalist in the International category as part of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2020.
He left school after his Junior Cert to work in the family business before going back to education. He completed a City and Guilds Cert in Basic Computer Programming in Letterkenny RTC (LYIT) at night classes and got an MBA from the University of Ulster in 1990.
He spent the following five years lecturing part-time in International Marketing and Business Planning at the University of Ulster, while running his own new technology services business.
We are booked out almost years ahead, big pharma is ringing us up.
“Governments now are spending – and that’s why Open Orphan is so lucky – they are spending tens of millions around the world developing and looking at where will the next pandemic come from. Let’s get the first line of defence, antivirals,” he says.
“Going forward, we are really busy working on next-generation vaccines.”
Nine vaccines have so far been approved under various regulatory regimes for use against Covid-19, and many others are in development.
“We are booked out almost years ahead, big pharma is ringing us up ‘can you run a trial in an RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] vaccine?’. Yep, no problem.”