LONDON, December 9 /PRNewswire/ -- The achievements of the global pharmaceutical industry were celebrated at the inaugural Scrip Awards ceremony held on December 7th, 2005, at London’s Grosvenor House. The awards are intended to bring wider recognition to an industry whose contribution to medical care is often overlooked.
Roche’s novel cancer therapies, Avastin and Tarceva, jointly won the Best New Drug award for their role in treating this devastating disease. Novartis collected three awards - for Pharmaceutical Company of the Year, Best Overall Pipeline, and Licensing Deal of the Year.
The BTG Lifetime Achievement award went to Professor Trevor Jones, CBE, whose distinguished career spans the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, government and academia. GlaxoSmithKline took the Corporate Social Responsibility award for its involvement in the global alliance to eliminate lymphatic filiariasis.
The Biotech Company of the Year was revealed as Amylin Pharmaceuticals, which managed to obtain approval for two novel antidiabetic drugs and to raise funding in a bearish biotech investment climate. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals celebrated a double triumph, winning the Best Partnership Alliance and Management Team of the Year awards.
Guests at the ceremony agreed that such an event was long overdue, and that it had indeed recognised the companies and individuals whose efforts lay behind the industry’s successes. “Wyeth is extremely proud to have received not one, but two prestigious Scrip Awards,” said Robert Ruffolo, president of Wyeth Research & Development and senior vice-president at Wyeth. “The event itself was uplifting in its recognition of the extremely important contribution that the pharmaceutical industry provides to public health.”
The stage is now set for the second Scrip Awards, which will be held in London on November 15th, 2006.
More details of the inaugural event, together with pictures and winners’ responses, will be published in a special supplement, “The Scrip Awards 2005", at the end of this year. Photos are also available on request.
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CONTACT: For further press details contact: Special Projects Editor,Informa Healthcare, Tel: +44-(0)20-7017-6989, Email:jenefer.trevena@informa.com.
