OGT Awarded Best Medtech Dealmaker by Oxford Bioscience Network

Oxford Gene Technology (OGT) has won the Best Medtech Dealmaker award at the 2013 Oxford Bioscience Network (OBN) awards held on Wednesday 2 October.

The award recognizes OGT’s collaboration with the Birmingham and Salisbury NHS Regional Genetics Laboratories to develop and launch a 58-gene solid tumour profiling service to advance vital research into personalized cancer care.

The panel, which includes important genes in breast, prostate, ovarian, lung and colorectal cancers, was developed in partnership with research teams at the centres in Birmingham and Salisbury as part of a £1.16 million funding award from the UK Government-backed Technology Strategy Board’s Stratified Medicines programme.

The NHS teams played a key part in the development of the service, validating the tumour profiling assay across different sample types.

Dr Jon Rees, CEO, Oxford Bioscience Network said: “The nature of the collaboration between OGT and Birmingham and Salisbury NHS Regional Genetics Laboratories was of great interest to the OBN Advisory Board, especially as a reflection of the current momentum in healthcare partnerships. The launch of the service in May is testament to how a collaboration of this type can succeed.”

Tim Hall, CFO, who accepted the award for OGT, said, “We value our partnership with the Birmingham and Salisbury NHS Regional Genetics Laboratories very highly. We are pleased that the OBN advisory board recognized the benefits that collaborations between research and industry can bring in the development of ground-breaking medical technologies.”

OGT’s SureSeq™ Solid Tumour Panel Sequencing Service was launched in May 2013, enabling researchers to identify both known and new mutations to develop informed, personalized cancer treatment strategies.

OGT is continuing its work with the research teams in Birmingham and Salisbury to develop the solid tumour profiling assay as a product for launch in early 2014.