INTERVIEW
ultimately manufacture the tablets. Hence the recently announced deal between the two companies. Carol Dalton is a co-founder of London’s AIMlisted Poolbeg Pharma. Regarding the deal with AnaBio, Ms Dalton says the plan is “to develop an oral vaccine delivery platform”. “Oral vaccines can provide a lot of benefits in vaccine rollouts… injectable vaccines are brilliant but there’s a huge benefit to oral vaccines in being able to hand them out. You don’t need all of the gear or volunteer units for injecting people… we are very excited about it… [and] it’s not just one specific disease that we will be focusing on.” The nutraceuticals graduate started temping after coming back from travelling, while looking for a full-time role, and through this Ms Dalton ended working at Raglan Capital. Three companies – Open Orphan, Poolbeg Pharma, and Amryt Pharma – have come out
FEBRUARY 2022
of Raglan, the former corporate finance house led by Cathal Friel that is now exclusively focused on rapidly bringing companies to public markets.
teamwork within your group. You’re a small team working on these deals, tight timelines, and a lot of document turnaround, and the pressure of trying to raise funds as well.
When she started there they had just finished the initial public offering (IPO) of Amryt Pharma.
“With Poolbeg, we raised £25m (€30m) in July, [in an] oversubscribed and very successful fundraiser, which was great. There’s a great sense of accomplishment after an IPO. You’re exhausted, working every hour that God sends.”
“Cathal offered me a kind of an open-ended role, mostly office manager, PA, all-rounder, that kind of thing. Not too long after I started we finalised a plan for what Open Orphan would be,” Ms Dalton says. Last year Ms Dalton played a big role in the IPO of Poolbeg, an experience she describes as “very hectic, very stressful, super-fast moving”. “But I actually really enjoy it. It’s high pressure, there’s high motivation, there’s so much happening. You feel like you’re at your wit’s end constantly. “But there’s a great sense of camaraderie and
Despite the very intense nature of the IPO, it is not something Ms Dalton says has been her greatest career challenge. The big challenge is one that many people face, that of self-doubt. She believes the pandemic has increased people’s interest in science. “I think that there’s probably a heightened interest. Because of Covid, science has become a lot more of an interesting subject than before.” π
53