Drug discovery & development award winners revealed at SLAS2020

The world’s most innovative, exciting and effective new drug discovery and development technologies have been recognized at a glitzy awards ceremony at SLAS2020.

The winners of the 2020 Scientists’ Choice Awards^® were announced by SelectScience Editor-in-Chief Kerry Parker to an audience of industry leaders and scientists in San Diego.

Now in their 13th year, the annual Scientists’ Choice Awards recognize the new technologies which have had the greatest impact on global scientific advancement. More scientists than ever have got involved in the drug discovery and development category this year by nominating and voting for their favorite lab products online.

And the winners are…

Best New Drug Discovery & Development Product

Nominated and voted for by scientists across the globe, the award for Best New Drug Discovery & Development Product of 2019 goes to theBioAccord LC-MS System, from Waters. The winning instrument is an integrated, easy-to-use system that simplifies high-performance LC-MS biopharma analysis for every user. Download this free eBook to find out more about the biopharmaceutical applications of the BioAccord system.

Your 10 runners-up were:

• xCELLigence RTCA eSight™ multimode real-time cell analyzer, from ACEA Biosciences – A part of Agilent
• CLARIOstar^® Plus multi-mode microplate reader, from BMG LABTECH
• Corning^® Elplasia^® plates for 3D cell culture, from Corning Life Sciences
• OrganoPlate^® Graft plates for vascularization of 3D tissues, from MIMETAS B.V.
• FLIPR Penta^® high-throughput cellular screening system, from Molecular Devices^®
• Dianthus molecular interaction screening system, from NanoTemper Technologies
• Intellicyt iQue3 flow cytometry platform, from Sartorius Group
• Spark^® Cyto multi-mode plate reader with fluorescence imaging and cytometry capabilities, from Tecan
• Thermo Scientific™ Orbitrap Exploris™ 480 mass spectrometer, from Thermo Fisher Scientific
• chameleon automated sample preparation system for cryo-EM, from SPT Labtec

Drug Discovery & Development Video of the Year - in association with The Scientists' Channel

This year’s winning video, ‘Studying the structural biology and biophysics of HIV with NMR’, was an interview featuring Dr. Tatyana Polenova, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Delaware, in association with Bruker BioSpin. In the film, Polenova discusses the use of solid-state NMR spectroscopy in her work looking at the molecular structure of viruses with atomic resolution.

On winning the award, Polenova said: “I was taken by surprise when I learned that the video won the Scientists’ Choice Award as the most popular video from the previous year with the SelectScience Drug Discovery & Development community.

“This is an honor, and I hope that this video may inspire young scientists to pursue research in the fields of structural biology, HIV research and NMR spectroscopy. It was a great experience professionally working with the SelectScience team, an amazing and fun group of people.”

Drug Discovery & Development Article of the Year

This award went to our fascinating interview with Andre ten Haaf, a scientist working for Bio-Rad at the time. The article, titled ‘Our mission to meet the increasing demand for new recombinant antibodies in pharma’, explores his team’s efforts to bridge the gap between biomarker discovery and antibody development with high-speed phage-display technology and was produced in association with FortéBio.

Drug Discovery & Development Application eBook of the Year

Application eBooks are a popular new SelectScience feature which aim to provide scientists with a range of useful resources on a certain topic, packaged into an affordable and engaging downloadable guide. In this new category, the winner was our ‘Development of Antibody-Based Cancer Therapeutics’ eBook, produced in partnership with Sartorius Group, which explores a number of successful discovery and development methods for monoclonal antibody-based treatments for cancer.

Drug Discovery & Development Webinar of the Year

The Webinar of the Year was ‘CRISPR screening in primary human T cells - extending cell type capabilities.’ Presented by Cristina Ghirelli, Manager - Immuno-Oncology, Horizon Discovery, the winning webinar explores the development of a pipeline to perform pooled CRISPR screening in primary T cells through a combined lentiviral and electroporation approach.

Drug Discovery & Development Email of the Year

Molecular Devices collected this year’s award for the email 'Your guide to exploring cellular pathways.’ It presented a downloadable eBook offering guidance on how to better explore cell pathways by performing multiple techniques — including cell imaging, cell-based viability and proliferation assays, western blots, DNA quantitation and more — on a single instrument.

PLUS: Seals of Quality Awarded to Products Scientists Love the Most

At the party, SelectScience also presented new Seal of Quality trophies to more of the lab products most loved by scientists worldwide. These awards recognize products that have consistently received multiple positive reviews on SelectScience® and are designed to assist scientists in making purchasing decisions. Latest winners are:

• Gold Seal of Quality: uTIP Pipette Tip for Universal Pipettes, from Biotix, Inc.
• Gold Seal of Quality: Direct-zol™ RNA Miniprep, from Zymo Research
• Silver Seal of Quality: Direct-zol™ RNA Miniprep Plus, from Zymo Research
• Silver Seal of Quality: ZymoPURE™ II Plasmid Maxiprep Kit, from Zymo Research
• Silver Seal of Quality: Zyppy™ Plasmid Miniprep Kit, from Zymo Research

Visit the Scientists' Choice Awards website for more information.