The latest Business updates from the science industry
by Heather Hobbs RoSPA Order of Distinction for 18th Consecutive Gold Award
Veolia Water Technologies UK (VWT UK) has achieved the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) Gold Award for Health & Safety for an 18th consecutive year, maintaining its RoSPA Order of Distinction accolade.
One of the World’s most prestigious and recognised schemes with almost 2,000 entries each year, the RoSPA Awards offer organisations a key opportunity to benchmark their health and safety performance as well as demonstrating an ongoing commitment to raising standards. By receiving this Order of Distinction, VWT UK has once again been recognised as a world leader in health and safety practices.
Commenting on the award, Lyndsey Wicks, Health & Safety Manager at VWT UK said: “We are delighted to receive a RoSPA Order of Distinction for Health & Safety for the 18th consecutive year. As a company, we’re proud to put the safety of our staff at the forefront of everything we do and gaining this award once more is testament to that commitment.”
Speaking on this year’s awards, Julia Small, Achievement Director at RoSPA commented: “The RoSPA Awards scheme is the longest-running of its kind in the UK, and it also receives entries from organisations across the globe, making it one of the most sought-after achievement awards for health and safety worldwide. RoSPA is very proud of the achievements of its entrants, and with this award we recognise the best of the best for delivery of safety in the workplace.”
A majority of the awards are non-competitive and mark achievement based on merit, bronze, silver and gold levels. Gold Medals, President’s Awards, Orders of Distinction and the Patron’s Award are presented to organisations sustaining the high standards of the gold level over consecutive years. Achieving the Order of Distinction award requires 15 consecutive Gold Awards. Following this year’s Gold Award and 18th Order of Distinction, VWT UK will now set its sights towards next year’s awards and maintaining another year of excellent workplace safety.
More information online:
ilmt.co/PL/K69a 56497pr@reply-direct.com
Strategic move sets new growth trajectory
The move into new 12,000 ft2 custom designed laboratories and offi ce premises at Granta Park Cambridge by ion channel contract research and drug discovery company, Metrion Biosciences, has doubled the Company’s laboratory space, providing signifi cant additional capacity for ongoing and future client projects and installation of a 384-well format automated electrophysiology and enhanced liquid handling system Metrion has increased its headcount by 50% over the past three years and is actively recruiting.
Labmate UK & Ireland asked company Chief Executive Andrew Southern about plans for this next phase of growth.
The automated 384 well system – when will this happen and become operational? Is active recruitment currently aimed at this development?
We are aiming for a 384-well system to be operational in Q4 2021. We are almost complete with our due diligence evaluation of available platforms and will make the fi nal decision on actual platform shortly. We have already recruited a highly experienced senior ion channel scientist with many years’ CRO experience who will join us as Head of Screening Technologies in December 2021. Whilst we already have staff with appropriate expertise to run 384-well assays, we will also be making additional hires in 2022 to ensure we have suffi cient resource available to meet the needs and timelines of our customers.
Can you tell us any more about the benefi ts the custom designed labs have brought?
“Metrion’s new laboratories have been specifi cally designed to achieve the objectives of our company over the next fi ve to ten years, with our overall objective being to become the leading global provider of ion channel drug discovery research services.
“Our new laboratory space includes a custom designed Good Laboratory Practise (GLP) screening facility to enable us to offer GLP quality hERG screening from Q1 2022. This assay is required for IND submissions across all therapeutic areas and the service will add further breadth to our comprehensive range of cardiac safety assays, where we have worked closely with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to validate a suite of safety profi ling assays.”
The new facilities had also more than quadrupled tissue culture space, enabling dedicated space for cellular and molecular biology.
“These resources will enable us to create new cell lines expressing ion channel proteins and accessory subunits and enable us to offer a much wider range of services across multiple therapeutic areas.” said Andrew.
The largest laboratory space was also customised around automated electrophysiology systems,
Andy Southern
Nick Foster
manual patch clamp rigs, fl uorescence screening equipment and compound preparation / liquid handling equipment with locations of all equipment designed to maximise effi ciency of workfl ows. “We have also retained an option to additional space within the facility should we need to expand, Andrew added.
Nick Foster recently joined the company as Chief Commercial Offi cer and Head of Global Business Development, following equity investment of £2.7 million. The funding round, led by Gresham House Ventures underpins signifi cant growth strategy for 2021 and 2022, that will see stronger focus on the USA, EU and Japan.
With a strong technical background in protein engineering and drug metabolism studies, Nick has formerly been Associate Director, Business Development Europe for BioFocus Limited (now Charles River Laboratories), Head of Commercial Operations at Optibrium Limited, and Director, Business Development for WuXi AppTec. Nick has an undergraduate degree in Applied Biochemistry from Liverpool John Moores University, UK.
More information online:
ilmt.co/PL/GaV9 56501pr@reply-direct.com
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