Award winners of the Scottish Enterprise Life Sciences

PWB Health Ltd named Most Promising Life Sciences Company

A Vale of Leven bioscience firm which has developed an innovative device to help women detect breast abnormalities, has been named most promising new life science company in Scotland at the Scottish Enterprise Scottish Life Sciences Awards 2007.

PWB Health Ltd, based in the former Polaroid factory at Vale of Leven industrial estate, beat off fellow nominees Highland Biosciences Ltd and Wireless BioDevices Ltd to take the prize at a ceremony at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre last night.

Established in January 2007, PWB Health has developed the BreastLight, a handheld home use device to assist women with breast awareness. It uses an array of high-powered red LEDs to safely shine light through the breast allowing women to see some of their internal breast structure.

The device will provide reassurance to the majority of women carrying out breast self examinations between their scheduled mammograms. And if a woman does notice any changes in her breasts, she will be able to report them to her GP.

The concept behind the device was first explored in the 1980s but, at the time, the technology was not advanced enough for the equipment to be used as a home device.

Trials have proved successful, with many pharmaceutical retailers expressing interest. Breastlights are set to go on sale by summer this year taking the product from start-up to volume sales in just 18 months.

Russell Overend, Director, PWB Health, said: We are delighted to have won this award which recognises the hard work and effort everyone at PWB has put in to develop this innovative product. I also like to thank Wideblue and Longbow for their investment in the development of this technology.

BreastLight has received excellent feedback from women who have trialled it and from pharmaceutical retailers and we hope to starting selling the product in the summer. Taking a product like this from development to sale in 18 months is a great achievement.

ProStrakan wins Leading Contribution to Life Sciences award

Galashiels pharmaceutical firm ProStrakan has won the Leading Contribution to Life Sciences award at the Scottish Enterprise Scottish Life Sciences Awards 2007.

The firm, which develops new medicines, beat off competition from Haemonetics UK Ltd and Lifescan Scotland Ltd to take the prize at a ceremony at Edinburgh International Conference Centre last night.

ProStrakan is one of Europe fastest-growing speciality pharmaceutical companies. The firm is engaged in the development and commercialisation of prescription medicines for the treatment of unmet therapeutic needs in major markets.

ProStrakan markets a range of products in major EU markets through its commercial operations based in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden and Benelux the economic partnership between Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. It has its headquarters and development base in Galashiels.

The company continues to grow and has recently announced its expansion into the US, where it plans to launch three new products by the end of 2009.

Dr John Brown honoured at Scottish Life Sciences Awards

The chair of the Life Sciences Industry Advisory Group for Scotland Dr John Brown has won a top award at the annual Scottish Enterprise Scottish Life Sciences Awards 2007.

Dr Brown won the award for Leading Individual Contribution to Life Sciences in Scotland at the ceremony at Edinburgh International Conference Centre last night.

Dr Brown said: is a great honour to win this award as there are many talented and committed people working to grow the life sciences sector in Scotland.

I am very proud to have played a part in developing the Scottish life sciences industry and I believe it has huge potential to be an even bigger contributor to our economy.

The Industry Advisory Group represents the interests of industry and acts as the advisory body for government intervention within the sector. It has recently been involved in driving the update of the national Life Sciences Strategy which guides investment and activity for all the key stakeholder groups across this important sector for the Scottish economy.

Rhona Allison, director of life sciences at Scottish Enterprise, said: Dr Brown is active in both the public and private sectors across a number of Scottish organisations and has made a significant contribution to many aspects of the life sciences in Scotland. It is wonderful to see him honoured.

In the public sector Dr Brown is Chairman of the Governing Council of the Roslin Institute, the BioIndustry Association in Scotland, the Life Science IAG and serves on the advisory board of ITI Life Sciences.

In the private sector he is Chairman of Scottish Biomedical and CXR Biosciences and a director of Ardana plc, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and has served on the Technology Strategy Board since 2004.

Yorkhill Hospital trio win SHIL award for best innovation originating from NHS Scotland

Three health experts from Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow have won the prestigious Scottish Health Innovations Limited award for best innovation originating from NHS Scotland at the annual Scottish Enterprise Scottish Life Sciences Awards 2008.

Susan Stenhouse, Consultant Clinical Scientist and Head of the West of Scotland Regional Molecular Genetics Service; Victoria Murday, Consultant Clinical Geneticist; and Daniel Ellis, Senior Genetic Technologist, beat off stiff competition to land the prize at a ceremony last night at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

The trio won the award for their work in developing technology to analyse large groups of genes for mutations. They have developed a faster method of identifying which genes might be carrying mutations that are causing a genetic disorder by quickly ruling out healthy genes.

Susan said: Winning the SHIL award for best innovation from NHS Scotland is thrilling. We are honoured to have been recognised for our work that can make a huge difference to the diagnoses of genetic diseases. We are very grateful to everyone who has assisted with this project.

Presently scientists have to sift through large numbers of genes to find the ones causing a disorder which takes a lot of time and money and often means a complete analysis is not possible.

Ruling out healthy genes allows for closer inspection of a smaller group of potentially mutated ones that might be the cause of the problem. Unlike current techniques, the new method requires DNA from only two affected family members and conditions such as long QT syndrome, cardiomyopathy, hereditary colorectal cancer and dominant retinitis pigmentosa would all be more amenable to testing using this method.

The trio were up against Prof Peter Sharp, professor of medical physics at Aberdeen University and Head of Medical Physics for NHS Grampian, and Dr John Olson, consultant ophthalmic physician at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, for their work in developing software that assesses eye disease in diabetic patients; and Dr Ellie Dow, consultant in biochemical medicine and director of research and development for NHS Tayside, and Dr Patrick Deegan, who is now a consultant in metabolic medicine at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge, for their work in developing a new method for colorectal cancer screening.