I am delighted that my public relations work with Abcodia announcing their major collaboration with Cancer Research UK was runner-up in the BioNewsRound award at the Genesis 2013 conference this week. The award was based on our press release announcing the creation of the new Early Diagnostics Consortium to discover and validate cancer biomarkers for their eventual use in cancer screening.

Each of the 12 finalists gave a presentation on why their chosen press release was “exciting and significant” for their company, the life science industry and patients.  For Abcodia,  their exciting announcement described how a two-year-old company with a staff of only four, signed a multi-year, multi-million pound deal with the world’s largest cancer charity that might save thousands of lives. The image with this post is a snapshot of some of the amazing media coverage we achieved.

The winners were Astex Pharmaceuticals announcing their acquisition by Otsuka Pharmaceutical, the second largest pharma company in Japan, and Abcodia were joint runners-up with Eagle Genomics.

The full list of finalists, all with fantastic stories to tell of outstanding innovative products and major deals, were:

Ariana Pharma – WIN Consortium selection

Eagle Genomics – Completion of first fundraising



Canbex – Commencement of Phase 1 clinical trial

BioIndustry Association – Announcing renewal of the Biomedical Catalyst

Kalgene – Announcing multi-year collaboration with CIMTEC

Domainex – Launch of Discovery STAR Award competition

MRCT – Joint call for targets with Arthritis Research UK

Astex Pharmaceuticals – Acquisition by Otsuka Pharmaceutical

Sernova Corp – Outcome of early Cell Pouch studies  I thought this announcement was particularly outstanding

Abcodia – The Early Diagnostics Consortium initiative

Isomerase Therapeutics – Collaboration with Neurovive Pharmaceutical AB

UCLB – Licensing deal with BioMarin  (Abcodia is another spin-out from UCLB)