SRG Celebrate Innovative Responses to the Pandemic through New Bionow Award

SRG are proud to sponsor Bionow’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic Award this year, celebrating the achievements of biomedical and life science businesses across the North of England. 

The competition was particularly high for this award, with a judging panel of industry experts shortlisting 4 nominees, from the 15 worthy applications.  

The past 2 years have seen scientific breakthroughs and mind-blowing dedication from companies, social enterprises, research and healthcare organisations, universities and other bodies. The Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic Award will be presented to reward research or innovation that has delivered a significant contribution to the understanding of, and response to, the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts.

Highlighting the 4 nominees

Working closely with scientific businesses for over 32 years, SRG understand the hard work and dedication of the scientific community, and by sponsoring this award, hope to help shine a spotlight on the work of the nominees. Here we summarise the ground-breaking work of the shortlist:

• Alderley Park Lighthouse Laboratory
  Created as part of the UK government’s emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Alderley Park Lighthouse Laboratory has been providing a high throughput Sars-Cov-2 qPCR testing service since April 2020. 
  
  
• Aptamer Group, Optimer®- enabled Microtox®PD wastewater monitoring for COVID-19
  MicrotoxPD uses biosensor technology, enabled with specific Optimer binders to capture and bind the Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 with 100% specificity for Spike protein and detection of minuscule concentrations (fem/ml) in wastewater, for real-time detection and monitoring signal outbreaks up to a week ahead of health facility testing.  
  
  
• Origin Healthcare Services, Aseptic Filling Facility - design, build and production in 5 months
  Origin Pharma Packaging supported the government’s battle with the pandemic by converting a 12,000sq ft pharma packaging warehouse into one of the UK’s leading aseptic filling facilities (7 ISO 5 filling lines), moving 5,000 pallets of pharma packaging to a new ISO 15378 storage facility within 5 months.
  
  
• University of Liverpool, Liverpool Covid-SMART Community Testing Pilot
  The University of Liverpool partnered with local council and NHS organisations to deliver a national pilot of community COVIDtesting for people without symptoms. Over six months the national pilot delivered world-leading evidence on Covid testing, increasing detection rates and reducing cases, as well as examining the partnerships between science and society.
  
  

Competition was high amongst the nominees of this unique award

Behruz Sheikh, Head of Pharma & Life Sciences (Northern Region) at SRG commented, “This year I was proud to be involved in the judging panel and can honestly say I was amazed by the quality and innovation of all the nominations. Working with the rest of the judging panel, it has been incredibly difficult to decide on firstly the shortlist, and then, of course, the winner to be announced at the awards evening. I wanted to thank everyone that submitted a nomination and say a huge congratulations to this well-deserved shortlist. It was a pleasure to read about the ground-breaking work you are all involved in.” 

Enjoy the Bionow Annual Awards Dinner in person

Originally due to be held in 2021, the rescheduled awards will take place on Thursday 31st March 2022.

Taking place at The Hangar, Concorde Conference Centre in Manchester, beneath the iconic Concorde, this celebration of science will give companies and individuals an evening to celebrate world-class achievements within the North of England. To find out more and book your place click here. We hope to see you there.