IDBS Receives Royal Accolade for Innovation and International Trade
Guildford, Surrey, UK, 25th September 2003 – The Duke of Gloucester yesterday presented IDBS with two Queen’s Awards for Enterprise at an Open Day at IDBS’ offices on the Surrey Research Park, Guildford.
After presenting the awards — for outstanding achievement in innovation and international trade — the Duke told VIP guests, customers and staff that IDBS’ drug discovery data management software had “made a huge difference to medical research, which will help to make a lot of people better in the future”.
The Open Day included a demonstration laboratory featuring IDBS’ software, the Tecan Freedom EVOTM assay workstation and Waters AllianceTM LC/MS System. The event also included an exhibition of IDBS’ new products for customers.
IDBS’ discovery informatics applications are now used by most of the world’s top pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to accelerate and streamline the drug discovery process. Each company screens vast numbers of compounds, often as many as 400,000 a week, in their efforts to identify the next block-buster drug. But that is only the first step in the lengthy process of testing and commercialisation.
Speeding up this process is vital when it can cost $800m to bring a new drug to market and companies then often have less than a decade to recoup their outlay before their exclusive patent runs out.
IDBS’ flagship ActivityBase software received the Queen’s Award for continuous innovation and development. It streamlines the drug discovery process by helping scientists to define experiments, capture, visualise and analyse the information derived and then share data throughout the company and with external collaborators. It is also used in other markets, including animal health, cosmetics and detergents research.
Neil Kipling, IDBS’ Chairman & CEO recently won the Southern Region Entrepreneur of the Year award for Technology and Communication. Thanking the Duke at yesterday’s Queen’s Award celebration, Neil said: “I am honoured to receive these awards on behalf of everybody at IDBS. We approach all our customer relationships as collaborative partnerships, which is made possible by IDBS’ remarkable, innovative and committed team.”
About IDBS
IDBS works with discovery organisations to maximise the value of research data, by providing software solutions to capture, manage and use biological and chemical information in an integrated framework. Unlike resource-intensive tool-based solutions, IDBS delivers complete – and proven – applications that bridge the gap between IT and science. Headquartered in Guildford, United Kingdom, IDBS has offices in Emeryville, California; Parsippany, New Jersey; and, Cambridge, Massachusetts. IDBS partners with CTC Laboratory Systems in Japan to market IDBS products and services. Founded in 1989, IDBS employs over 150 people worldwide.
Other product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.
For further information, please contact:
Beth Thomas, Marketing Communications Manager
IDBS, 2 Occam Court, Surrey Research Park
Guildford, Surrey GU2 7QB, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1483 595010
Fax: +44 (0) 1483 595001
Email: bthomas@id-bs.com
