One of the world's biggest pharmaceutical firms Bristol-Myers Squibb is teaming up with IDA Ireland to finance a €15 million university research project.

The US firm, which generates $20 billion (€15.5 billion) a year in sales and employs 800 staff in Dublin, is to co-finance a project aimed at improving the manufacturing process for biotechnology drugs.

The research projects will be hosted at DCU and NUI Galway, which will both create a chair in that particular area of biotechnology and teams of researchers to work on the important project.

It is understood the IDA board recently approved the project and the Minister for Enterprise, Michéal Martin, will shortly bring the funding proposal to the Government for final approval.

In an unusual departure for IDA Ireland, it will part-finance the project as part if its ongoing drive to lure big biotechnology investments to the Republic.

Science Foundation Ireland, the Government agency formed to attract high profile research projects to the Republic, is also backing the biopharma project.

The Government and IDA are currently seeking to attract at least one biotechnology manufacturing investment worth up to €1 billion. It is currently preparing a site close to Galway for a factory and is using its research base as part of its marketing strategy to attract biotechnology investors.

The Republic already hosts one of Europe's biggest biotechnology plants, the Wyeth biopharma plant on the outskirts of Dublin. A subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson also recently made a substantial investment in Cork.

The two university research teams will be offered support by private sector researchers from Bristol-Myers Squibb to help them study how drugs are grown in bioreactors. These are the vessels that contain a range of living organisms to grow new drugs through a biotechnology process.

The research project will analyse the different materials that are used within bioreactors. It will also investigate the sugars that sit on the drug cultures during a manufacturing process.

DCU, which hosts the National Institute of Cellular BioTechnology, is expected to play a leading role in the project. The school encourages inter-disciplinary approaches to research by having process engineers, biochemists, microbiologists, geneticists and a pharmacologist within a single departmental unit.

Bristol-Myers Squibb makes pharmaceuticals, consumer products, nutritional products and medical devices. It has a research and development site in Swords and a factory in Mulhuddart.