Lab Innovations, the UK’s only trade show dedicated to the laboratory industry, beat all records for the show, attracting 3,113 attendees - a 10% increase on the previous year. Underlying the headline number were significant increases in visitors involved in purchasing products and services. Overall, 79% of visitors were involved in the purchasing decision, with a 43% increase in lab managers, a 53% increase in lab technicians, and an impressive 125% increase in procurement managers. In addition, the number of scientists attending increased by 49%...

Scotland is to have its own £15.8m artificial intelligence health research centre, which promises to enable better patient diagnosis, treatment and outcomes. The Industrial Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research in Digital Diagnostics, to be known as iCAIRD, brings together a pan-Scotland collaboration of 15 partners from across academia, the NHS, and industry. Greg Clark, UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), announced that UK Research and Innovation will invest £10million in iCAIRD...

Oxford HighQ, a spinout from Oxford University, aims to revolutionise chemical and nanoparticle sensor technology with ‘quantum’ sensors up to 10,000 times more sensitive than current counterparts. Oxford HighQ, a quantum technologies spinout from Oxford University, has launched with £2.1m in seed funding to commercialise components of quantum computing technology developed at the University, providing a step change in performance for chemical and nanoparticle sensing....

BioAscent’s COO, Sylviane Boucharens named in top 50 Movers and Shakers in BioBusiness. BioAscent Discovery Limited’s COO, Dr Sylviane Boucharens, has been included in the BioBeat 2018 list of 50 Movers and Shakers in BioBusiness. Her nomination follows an incredibly successful year in which she has spearheaded the company’s expansion to become a fully integrated drug discovery CRO. Co-founded by Dr Boucharens in 2013, BioAscent initially focused on compound management....

Absolute Antibody Ltd., specialists in antibody sequencing, engineering and recombinant expression with a vision to make recombinant antibody technology accessible to all, has announced the opening of a new facility in northeast England. The new facility more than doubles Absolute Antibody’s laboratory space and will enable an even greater increase in its antibody production capacity, allowing the company to better service customers and accelerate the expansion of its recombinant antibody portfolio....

Breakthrough technology cuts screening time by 10 times compared to circular dichroism (CD) devices with auto samplers and is at least 100 times faster than standard HPLC processes. Bio-Logic (France) and Hinds Instruments (United States) are pleased to announce the launch of the EKKO®, the world’s first high throughput CD microplate reader. EKKO® demonstrates significant potential for the pharmaceutical industry and any organization working in the field of asymmetric synthesis, catalysis and organic/medicinal chemistry....

Provepharm Life Solutions and partner Walter Reed Army Institute of Research were selected for project focusing on anti-malaria treatment in endemic regions. Provepharm Life Solutions, a French independent pharmaceutical and life sciences group which revitalizes known molecules, announces today it has won the 2018 Prix Galien-Medstartup Award. The company was selected or its collaborative project with the Experimental Therapeutics branch (ET), Medical Research Directorate, Africa (MRD-A), and the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences....

Platform Patent for Clustering a Subset of Antigens for Diagnosing Diseases. ImmunArray, a molecular diagnostic company co-headquartered in Rehovot, Israel and Richmond, Virginia, whose novel blood tests are pioneering new and more accurate ways to diagnose diseases detected by changes in the immune system, has announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently issued a new patent that covers one of ImmunArray’s core diagnostic protocols – generic methods....

Frost & Sullivan has presented INTEGRA Biosciences with the ‘2018 Global Laboratory Pipetting Company of the Year’ award, recognizing its products as innovative, revolutionary and able to fulfil the needs of customers. Frost & Sullivan’s transformational health research group conducted extensive research using key benchmarking criteria across two main areas – visionary impact and performance, and customer impact – to compare companies in the industry, and found that INTEGRA surpassed the competition....

The words of Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner, “Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries and new ideas, probably in that order”, could not be more truefor gene editing. Here, Maya Raghunandan, freelancer for online platform for freelance scientists Kolabtree and molecular biologist, explains some key applications of gene editing and its ethical implications. Gene editing applications span various industries, most notably food and healthcare. It refers to specific, intentional alterations to the DNA sequence of a cell, tissue or organism....

The biocluster located in the Greater Paris region is the first European park to receive the Association of University Research Parks (AURP) award. Genopole, a French biocluster dedicated to research in the fields of genetics and biotechnology, today announces it has received the AURP Award of Excellence for Outstanding Research Park. This is the first time a member outside the US has been acknowledged. The announcement was made during AURP’s International Annual Conference in Baltimore (Maryland)...