SEED Biosciences and Andrew Alliance receive innovation awards in Washington

SLAS 2019 international conference and exhibition brings together thousands of players in the life sciences technology and discovery such as scientists, researchers, engineers, academics and business leaders. The event also features more than 300 companies that showcase and launch new products and services. The 2019 exhibition took place from 2nd to 6th February in Washington D.C.

The event also provides emerging startups with a designated exhibiting area, AveNEW, allowing them to present their innovations to the visitors and engage in collaborative interactions to help them grow and scale their business. The dedicated platform also allows them to connect them with purchasing influencers and decision-makers from around the world.

Through awards programs, startups have an additional opportunity to boost their presence and prove the feasibility solutions. In this year’s show, two Swiss startups won two of the five SLAS awards.

SEED Biosciences received the SLAS Ignite award as the best-emerging company. Seed Biosciences developed DispenCell (photo left), a compact pipetting robot to enable scientists to precisely isolate single cells three times faster than existing solutions. Single cell isolation is a critical enabling step in many biological processes, including the production of biologics, cancer diagnosis, stem cell therapies and personalized medicine. Unlike conventional systems, the patented DispenCell pipetting system permits accurate traceability and delivers a faster yet affordable and intuitive single-cell solution.

In their LinkedIn post, SEED Biosciences states: “Our CEO, Georges Muller had the chance to get lots of constructive feedback from the world’s leading scientists, business leaders as well as a founder of one of the industry flagships. He comes back home with a stronger motivation to succeed.”

The SLAS judging panel applied on a combination of key concepts for evaluating the candidates; these include, marketing plan, market presence and potential; funding prospects; plan for growth and the existence of balanced company leadership, among other qualities.

Besides SEED, the Zurich based startup Ectica Technologies made it to the finalists of the Ignite awards.

The second award category «SLAS New Product Award» went to Andrew Alliances, for their liquid handling robot Andrew+ and Pipette+ (photo right). Andrew improves the repeatability, performance and speed of liquid handling in the pipetting process. Andrew eliminates human error, fatigue, and inhomogeneity in training which results in more reliable data. Pipette+ are connected electronic pipettes that can execute experiment protocols designed in OneLab. The pipettes combine superior performance and ergonomics, improving productivity through reduction of workload by 90%, minimizing error, and providing full traceability.

(RAN)