Marama Labs, a life-sciences instrumentation start-up, has secured €280,000 in funding from Enterprise Ireland to fund the expansion of the company's Irish operations.
Enterprise Ireland's High Potential Start-Up (HPSU) investment is part of the company's fourth quarter seed-plus round led by leading Irish VC The Yield Lab Europe.
It brings the total funding of the round raised by Marama Labs to €2m.
The company was founded in New Zealand in 2019 and is led by Irish-born CEO and co-founder Dr Brendan Darby. It has offices in Dublin and Wellington in New Zealand.
It said the new funding will be used to fund the expansion of its Irish operations, opening a commercially-focused applications lab in North Dublin and hiring a life-sciences applications team to support its customers in the Northern Hemisphere.
Marama Labs develops spectroscopy technology that can rapidly analyse the chemistry of highly complex high-value liquids in industries such as life sciences and fermentation.
Its CloudSpec product is able to quantify crucial quality information about new classes of therapeutics, called nanomedicines, in seconds, compared to the hours it takes with existing technologies.
The start-up is working with some of the world's leading therapeutic manufacturers to speed up their drug discovery and manufacturing workflows, with the life sciences product due to launch on the market in 2025.
Brendan Darby, CEO and co-founder of Marama Labs, said that Ireland's position as a leader in the global life sciences industry provides the perfect launchpad for Marama Labs to scale its commercial footprint in the Northern Hemisphere life sciences market.
"Our mission is to become a global leader in scientific instrumentation, removing bottlenecks in the chemical analysis of liquids, enabling faster and cheaper development of life-saving products," he added.
