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OBN Awards 2016

Winners Recognised at Industry Leading Event

I am delighted to announce the winners of the prestigious OBN Awards 2016 that were presented last night in front of a sold-out audience of over 250 leaders from Biotech, Medtech and Investment companies at the Town Hall in Oxford.

The Awards, which are in their 8th year, celebrate the best of UK life sciences - outstanding innovation, fundraisers and achievements - underlining the pre-eminence of the UK sector in the global marketplace.

John Harris, CEO of OBN, said: "We are thrilled with the high quality of nominees this year which made picking just one winner in each category very difficult.   We work hard to keep the awards fresh and have introduced several new categories this year to reflect industry trends. The turn-out and support we've received is a true reflection of how buoyant our industry is and I would like to thank our sponsors for helping us make the OBN Awards the success it is today."

The winners are:

Best Start-up Biotech Company Award, Sponsored by Penningtons Manches

Winner: OxStem - for its disruptive approach to the field of regenerative medicine

www.oxstem.co.uk

Best Emerging Biotech Company Award, Sponsored by Covance

Winner: Mereo BioPharma Group - for extraordinary progress in the development of products focused on rare and specialty disease areas

www.mereobiopharma.com

Best Established Biotech Company Award, Sponsored by Premier Research

Winner: Heptares Therapeutics, for their outstanding acquisitions, impressive product pipeline and industry leading technology

www.heptares.com

Best Start-up Medtech Company Award, Sponsored by JA Kemp

Winner: Precision Ocular, for making great progress in their strategy to develop novel therapeutics and drug delivery systems to treat retinal disease

www.precisionocular.com

Best Emerging Medtech Company Award, Sponsored by World Courier

Winner:  Edinburgh Molecular Imaging, for the rapid discovery and clinical development of their optical imaging "SMART Agents"

www.edinimage.com

Best Established Medtech Company Award, Sponsored by Arthur J Gallagher

Winner: Oxford Nanopore Technologies, for developing the world's first and only nanopore DNA sequencer

www.nanoporetech.com

Best Emerging UK Synthetic Biotech Company Award, Sponsored by SynbiCITE

Winner: Touchlight Genetics, for developing an innovative, in vitro dual enzyme process that produces DNA at commercial scale and quality

www.touchlight.com

Best Implementation of Digital Healthcare Award, Sponsored by EY

Winner: Congenica, for its cloud-based technology that supports whole genome analysis from a single DNA test

www.congenica.com

Best UK Life Sciences Incubator Award, Sponsored by James Cowper Kreston

Winner: BioHub at Alderley Park, for running an excellent BioHub that has supported 188 companies and over 600 people resulting in 49 Virtual Companies and 10 Physical Companies

www.biocity.co.uk/biocity/alderley-park

Highest Impact Investor Award, Sponsored by N+1 SINGER

Winner: Mercia Technologies, for focusing on the creation, funding and scaling of early stage, innovative technology businesses with high growth, global potential from the UK regions

www.merciatechnologies.com

Best Public-Private Collaboration Award, Sponsored by Oxford AHSN

Winner: The Structural Genomics Consortium

www.thesgc.org

Outstanding Achievement Award

Winner: Oxford Nanopore Technologies, for being extremely disruptive in their field and setting an excellent example to the industry

www.nanoporetech.com

Special Recognition Award

Winner: Neil Woodford CBE, Founding Partner and Head of Investment, Woodford Investment Management

www.woodfordfunds.com