Print - Bio-IT World Announces Winners of Its 2008 Best Practices Awards

Source: Cambridge Innovation Institute
April 30, 2008 11:32 ET

Bio-IT World Announces Winners of Its 2008 Best Practices Awards

Editor's Choice Award Goes to Dr. Kenneth H. Buetow, Ph.D., The National Cancer Institute Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology for Implementing an Open Source Network to Speed Cancer Research

NEEDHAM, MA--(Marketwire - April 30, 2008) - Bio-IT World magazine today announced the winners of its fourth Best Practices Awards program. 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.

Established in 2003, Bio-IT World's Best Practices Awards Program recognizes these organizations for their outstanding innovations and excellence in the use of technologies, practices, and novel business strategies that will advance drug discovery, development, biomedical research, and clinical trials. 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.

Bio-IT World's Best Practices Awards ceremony was held last night at the World Trade Center in Boston, MA, co-located with CHI's Sixth Annual Bio-IT World Conference & Expo. Key industry leaders attended the ceremony, which 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

Criteria and Judging

Awards finalists and winners were selected for their innovative utilization of bio-IT, including life science equipment, informatics and information technology, on a project or organizational level to achieve significantly improved results (i.e. improvements in productivity or conceptual breakthroughs in scientific understanding or process methodology). The peer review judges applied several criteria to make their decisions, such as innovation, significance, and industry impact. Entries were accepted from R&D and scientific facilities and labs in pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, academia, government, medical or related institutions and organizations, as well as public and private research labs. For information on Bio-IT World's 2008 Best Practices Awards, please email marketing_chmg@chimediagroup.com. The July/August issue of Bio-IT World will feature editorial on Best Practices, highlighting award winners, profiling entrants, event coverage and the enabling technologies used by the many companies.

The 2008 Best Practices Awards were organized by Bio-IT World editors, including Executive Editor John Russell, Associate Managing Editor Allison Byrum Proffitt, Editor-in-Chief Kevin Davies, and key marketing & operations staff members of Cambridge Healthtech Media Group, a division of CHI. Joining the editors in judging the entries was a distinguished panel of experts, including:

--  Stephen Fogelson, Devolotron
--  Jim Golden, SAIC
--  Stan Kachnowski, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
--  Jerry Schindler, Merck
--  Deborah Borfitz, Contributing Editor, eCliniqua
--  Sandy Aronson, Harvard Medical School
--  Howard Asher, LSIT
--  Susie Stephens, Eli Lilly
--  Susan Ward, Consultant
--  John Whittle, Tessella
--  Chris Connor, Health Industry Insights
--  Phillips Kuhl, Cambridge Healthtech Institute