By Bio-IT World Staff
May 6, 2008 | Bio-IT World has announced the winners of its fourth Best Practices Awards program. The awards ceremony took place April 29, 2008, at the World Trade Center in Boston and was co-located with CHI’s Sixth Annual Bio-IT World Conference & Expo.
Grand Prize winners within seven life sciences awards categories include Applied Biosystems, Christian-Albrechts-University, Eli Lilly & Company, GlaxoSmithKline, Genstruct, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca, and Merck & Company.
In addition, this year’s recipient of the Editor’s Choice Award is Dr. Kenneth H. Buetow, NCI Associate Director for Bioinformatics and Information Technology, for the implementation of caBIG, an open source network to speed cancer research.
The ceremony featured keynote speeches by Colin Hill, CEO, president, chairman & co-Founder of Gene Network Sciences; and Dietrich Stephan, Ph.D., co-founder and chief science officer of Navigenics, former deputy director, Translational Genomics Research Institute.
Phillips Kuhl, co-founder and president of Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI), started the evening with welcoming comments and introduced Kevin Davies, Ph.D., editor-in-chief of Bio-IT World, the flagship publication of CHI, to initiate the presentation of awards.
“Bio-IT World salutes the winners of its 2008 Best Practices Awards program. Not only have they demonstrated impressive technical achievements as judged by their peers, but also they’ve demonstrated a commitment to advancing “best practices” throughout the biomedical research and drug development community by their willingness to share information about the innovative tools they are using and explaining how they use them,” said Kevin Davies, editor in chief of Bio-IT World.
A peer-review panel of 14 expert judges reviewed 54 detailed submissions from organizations ranging from large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academic institutions, to niche service providers, detailing best practices in one of seven categories. John Russell, executive editor of Bio-IT World; Rudy Potenzone, Ph.D., WW industry technology strategist for pharmaceuticals of Microsoft; James Reaney, director, research markets of BlueArc Corporation; and Kevin Davies, Bio-IT World, presented the Grand Prize trophies to the following organizations within these categories:
• Basic Research, R&D: Christian-Albrechts-University and Applied Biosystems
These organizations were recognized for developing a pipeline to use for the identification of common susceptibility variants of functional significance for complex diseases, notably Crohn’s disease.
• Clinical Research: Eli Lilly & Company
The organization was recognized for managing and tracking metrics associated with implementing the SAS Drug Development solution / partnership.
• Clinical Trials: GlaxoSmithKline
GSK was recognized for developing a novel industry capability which enables robust and efficient safety signal detection in clinical trials from phase 1 onward.
• Drug Discovery & Development: Genstruct and Sirtris Pharmaceuticals
Both organizations were recognized for developing a Casual Network Modeling (CNM) system—a powerful approach to modeling complex biological systems. Sirtris and Genstruct collaborated to characterize the molecular MOA of a revolutionary set of bioactive, Sirt1—activating small molecules.
• IT Informatics: AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals
The organization was recognized for implementing the FDA’s electronic submissions gateway with SAFE digital signatures.
• Knowledge Management: AstraZeneca Discovery (UK)
The organization was recognized for standardizing screening data globally and making it available to all AstraZeneca sites.
• Translational and Personalized Medicine: Merck & Company
The organization was recognized for breaking down clinical and research silos that allowed them to view the Biomarker Information Pipeline with the Moffitt Cancer Center that automates the flow and integration of patient care data and gene expression data.
Honorable recognition also went to the following organizations in the seven categories:
• Basic Research, R&D: University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute
• Clinical Research: National Institute of Neurological Disorders & Stroke
• Clinical Trials: Johnson & Johnson PRD Early Development
• Drug Discovery & Development: GlaxoSmithKline
• IT Informatics: River Road Bio
• Knowledge Management: Naval Medical Research Center
• Translational and Personalized Medicine: Cogenics and IO Informatics
Learn more about the Bio-IT World Best Practices Awards program.