Bio-IT World Announces Winners Of Its 2005 Best Practices Awards

Framingham, MA - Bio-IT World magazine today announced the winners of its third annual Best Practices Awards program. Grand Prize winners within key life sciences awards categories include Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGEN), Pfizer Global R&D, GlaxoSmithKline, Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics, the National Cancer Institute and U.K. Trade & Investment. These organizations were recognized for their noteworthy innovations and results in the research, development and manufacture of bio-IT-enabled therapeutics and diagnostics, as well as the underlying business strategies that support them.

Bio-IT World's Best Practices Awards ceremony was held last night at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Key industry luminaries attended the ceremony, which featured keynote speeches by Howard Asher, Chairman of the Board of Life Sciences Information Technology Global Institute; and H. Thomas Watkins, CEO of Human Genome Sciences.

This year's recipient of the President's Award is Dr. Leroy Hood, President of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. Alan Bergstein, President and Publisher of Bio-IT World, Inc. presented the 2005 President's Award to Dr. Hood in recognition of his seminal role in developing high through-put sequencing technology, which gave root to the flourishing field of genomics, as well as his groundbreaking work in the innovative field of systems biology, with its profound implications on basic research in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries.

Dr's Hood's research has focused on the study of molecular immunology, genomics, and systems biology. His professional career began at Caltech where he and his colleagues developed instruments for DNA and protein sequencing and synthesis, which comprise the technological foundation for contemporary molecular biology and drug discovery. He also was founder and chairman of the cross-disciplinary Department of Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Washington. In late 1999, he co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology to pioneer systems approaches to biology and medicine. Dr. Hood also has played a role in founding numerous biotechnology companies, including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Systemix, Darwin and Rosetta.

"Our third annual Best Practices Awards program has done a tremendous job of spotlighting academic and commercial organizations that have made outstanding contributions to the success of technological innovation in the advancement of drug discovery research and development -- research that is driving cures for some of today's most severe diseases," said Dr. Kevin Davies, editor-in-chief, Bio-IT World. "This isn't a beauty pageant, it's a rigorously judged competition in which our expert panel of judges strive to publicly recognize and honor those companies and individuals who are playing such a critical role in the future of the Bio-IT and biopharma industries."

A peer-review panel of expert judges reviewed 33 lengthy submissions from organizations ranging from large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to academic institutions, detailing best practices in one of six categories. Grand Prize trophies went to the organizations below within those categories:

-- Discovery and Basic Research: Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGEN) The organization was recognized for combining the leading microarray technology of Affymetrix and gene discovery software from Silicon Genetics to develop an industrial-style genotyping pipeline that has led to the rapid localization and identification of dozens of disease genes, including a form of sudden infant death syndrome.

-- Computational Biology and Informatics: Pfizer Global R&D The company won the award for the implementation of critical in silico simulation software, developed by Pharsight Corporation, which helped decide the fate of a new cardiovascular drug. Despite the halt in development, the modeling approach resulted in huge financial savings and represents a powerful new tool for Pfizer Global R&D.

-- Clinical Research and Trials: GlaxoSmithKline The company created an important and innovative drug safety monitoring system, developed in partnership with Lincoln Technologies, that effectively flags and documents potential adverse events in clinical trials around the world. This innovation is pushing GlaxoSmithKline to the forefront of the modern pharmacovigilance practice.

-- Infrastructure: IT Hardware & Systems Software: Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics The center was awarded for its groundbreaking integrated genomics gateway, GIGPAD. The gateway's architectural services, which are attributed to Hewlett-Packard, draw together a wide array of research and clinical data in a prime example of the application of information technology in pursuit of personalized medicine.

-- Knowledge Management: National Cancer Institute The organization was recognized for its exciting example of data analysis in the field of confocal microscopy. With the help of Silicon Graphics, this has resulted in novel visualization, analysis and collaboration capabilities for researchers studying the biological origins of cancer and other disorders.

-- Business Strategy: U.K. Trade & Investment The agency, on behalf of the U.K. government, has addressed a particularly controversial area of science and technology. It has fostered a regulatory climate to stimulate the creation of world-class biopharma companies and research institutes, and launch the first public stem cell bank to afford global access to ethically approved, quality-controlled stem cell lines.

Editor's Choice Awards also went to The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard for its open-source software, GenePattern, that has accelerated the pace of genomic analysis; and the J. Craig Venter Institute for J-LIMS, an exemplary LIMS technology that is being used to spearhead a revolution in high-throughput genomic sequencing and analysis.

SOURCE: Bio-IT