BioProbe Diagnostics

About BioProbe Diagnostics

BioProbe Diagnostics (BPD) is a biotech company from Galway that was established in 2017. It has been established to commercialise novel Nucleic Acid Diagnostics (NAD) proprietary technologies for detecting and identifying microbial contaminants associated with the environmental and industrial sectors.

The team is currently focused on the launch of the company’s initial NAD product, namely Bio-Lp-1, which will add novel capability to Legionella testing.

To fund this project, BPD applied for and succeeded in two grant proposals from the European Union’s H2020 programme, now known as Horizon Europe. In the following case study, we spoke with Dr Kate Reddington, Chief Scientific Officer, to discuss working with Myriad to prepare their application, what it takes to prepare a good grant application and her advice to other businesses looking to do the same.

Innovation

In 2017, BioProbe Diagnostics (BPD) applied for a Horizon 2020 SME Instrument Phase 1 grant from the EU. Whilst they were ultimately unsuccessful, they had done OK in terms of scoring. At the time, they were involved in a MedTech accelerator and were referred to speak with Marc Greatrex to help with their revised SME instrument phase 1 application. Their goals were to improve the overall score and get a different perspective on the application from a specialised and highly successful grant bid writer.

After a brief call, Marc gave his thoughts on the application and whether he could offer any assistance in helping the application succeed. 

”Once we met with Marc, it became obvious that he had much experience in this field…. You felt like you were working with someone, and even though it was OUR grant, OUR proposal, and it was for OUR company, you felt he was invested in it…. he became, and still is, someone that we sit down and plan grants with and plan various tasks, and you get the feeling he’s very much nearly part of the company in writing”

How we helped

Marc assisted BDP with their SME instrument phase 1 application and helped BDP secure the highest scoring application in Ireland and 2^nd overall in Europe in that round.

So, what did Marc bring to the table that BDP didn’t have? Dr Reddington believes Marc’s experience helped immensely…

“He has a lot of experience reviewing these (applications) and knowing what the EU is looking for. Marc is also a very personable person, so you could have a conversation with him; he gets it, and he is very open to "maybe these are things you should explore, these are things that were a little bit weak", and it becomes very obvious that he is someone who understands exactly what the EU is looking for….”

Following their first success, BDP then asked Marc and Myriad for help with a Fast Track to Innovation application, and the collaboration helped the BDP team achieve the highest score in Ireland and fourth overall in Europe.

“Marc just had little ideas that helped to ensure you got all the marks that were going.” Said Dr Reddington. “I think what you learn is there is a certain way that these grants need to be written…. the experience that Marc has is invaluable. He’s written so many of these, and he’s been so successful in many different European grants – whether that be SME Instruments, EICs, FTIs, or even other grants. And for someone to have that knowledge of the evaluation procedure, it’s really important. As I said, I’m a very technical person.  I have a technical background. I’d love to spend those 30 pages writing about the technology, but no one will give me £2.8million to do that. So, it was really good to have Marc there to go, “Yeah, that’s good, Kate, but that’s not going to get you marks”

The reward

At this point, I asked Kate what her recommendations would be to anyone considering working with Myriad and the grant writing team in particular: “For me, it’s really important to work with people that I can trust and feel will pull their weight, They also need to be involved in what you’re doing and understand what you’re doing. Marc had those characteristics.  We all plan to have these (grants) written with loads of time to spare, and the reality is that it’s often last minute. It’s late evening. It’s working weekends, and Marc was always available. He was flexible about what worked for everyone, which was very useful. Getting along with someone is important because there is a certain amount of stress in these things…. we got on very well with Marc; he was very useful to us, and we’ve strongly recommended him. He has that expertise, knowledge and willingness to help. It’s a huge advantage for any company to bring that experience in.”

Dr Reddington’s final thoughts on working with Myriad to prepare their grant applications

“It’s been very positive. It’s been rewarding.  It’s been a team effort. It’s also been eye-opening because it made us look at grants differently, understanding that it is a team effort to get these things written and that sometimes you need to reach out and get that expertise externally. So it’s been a very positive and rewarding experience for us. We are a very small startup company, and without getting this FTI we would have been in a lot of trouble in the next couple of months to continue, and Marc helped to drive that to get that successful application over the line.”