Innovative winner revealed

A computer scientist and a genetic statistician have been awarded a £13,000 prize to develop their bio-statistical software company.

Dr Felix Agakov and Professor Paul McKeigue, both from the Centre for Population Health Sciences, have won BioQuarter’s inaugural innovation competition for their company concept Pharmatics Limited.

Drug development

The duo has developed software that dramatically reduces the time required for drug development.

The concept was created to address the challenges of exploiting vast arrays of modern biological data to speed up discovery and testing of new drugs.

As well as winning £13,000, Dr Agakov and Professor Paul McKeigue also receive professional services support from the prize’s sponsors.

Medical business

Bioquarter’s innovation competition launched to discover the best medical business concepts to be created from scientific research.

A shortlist of 10 was created from entries supplied by University of Edinburgh and NHS Lothian staff.

Runners up

Engineering PhD student Keith Muir was awarded first runner-up in the competition for his company Cytomos Ltd.

AccuoPept, created by Dr Thierry LeBihan of the University’s Centre for Systems Biology, and AcidTest, founded by Dr Christopher French of the University’s Institute of Structural & Molecular Biology, were also given awards.

There was a great response to this year's competition. Next year we hope to engage even more researchers with the message that scientific innovation can bring real rewards outside the lab - not just to researchers, but to patients and their families as well.