Astex awarded The Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 Research and Development Award 2004
Cambridge, UK, December 2 2004.
Astex Technology, the fragment-based drug discovery and development company, received the Research and Development Award 2004 at the Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 awards ceremony held on the 30th November. The award recognises Astex’s pioneering research and development into novel drugs to treat major diseases including cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Astex has ranked as the fastest growing UK biotechnology company in the Tech Track 100 league for the past two years and is one of a select few biotechnology companies to be included in the annual Tech Track 100 since its launch in 2001.
"It is an honour to receive the special award for Research and Development 2004 and to be ranked as Britain’s top biotech company for the second year in a row in this prestigious listing of Britain’s fastest growing technology companies. We’re extremely proud of this special recognition of our achievements which is a tribute shared by everyone in the company,” stated Mr. Timothy Haines, CEO of Astex.
Notes to Editors
About Astex
Astex is a biotechnology company producing novel small molecule therapeutics. Using its pioneering fragment-based drug discovery approach, Astex has rapidly established a broad pipeline of next generation, molecularly targeted oncology drugs, the first of which will enter clinical trials in 2005.
Astex’s leading position in fragment-based drug discovery derives from its integrated discovery engine, Pyramid™. High-throughput X-ray crystallography and other biophysical techniques are used to identify drug fragments bound to target proteins and to help in directing the transformation of the fragments, using efficient medicinal chemistry, into potent, selective drugs. Pyramid™ has been successfully applied across a wide variety of therapeutic targets, including those regarded as ‘intractable’ by the pharmaceutical industry, resulting in potential new drug leads for the treatment of cancer, inflammation and Alzheimer’s disease.
Astex’s unprecedented productivity in lead discovery has been endorsed by drug discovery alliances with major pharmaceutical companies including AstraZeneca, Aventis, Boehringer Ingelheim, Fujisawa Pharmaceutical Company Ltd., Mitsubishi Pharma and Schering AG. Astex was established in 1999 and is well financed by leading, blue chip US and European investors (Abingworth, Advent International, Alta Partners, Apax, GIMV, HypoVereinsbank, Oxford Bioscience Partners, Schering AG and the University of Cambridge).
For further information on Astex please visit the Company’s website at www.astex-technology.com
About the league table
Now in its fourth year, The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 annual league table sponsored by Microsoft for the first time this year, is compiled by Oxford-based research company Fast Track and published with The Sunday Times business section on 3rd October and on www.fasttrack.co.uk. The league table is co-sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Hiscox insurance.
League table criteria
Companies are ranked according to their annual growth in sales between 2001 and 2003. Companies had to be registered in the UK as unquoted ultimate holding companies. The league table adopts the London Stock Exchange’s techMARK definition of what constitutes a technology company. Companies primarily engaged simply in reselling or reassembly were excluded, as were IT consultancies that do not develop proprietary technology. Companies also had to forecast an increase in sales from 2003 to 2004, but were not required to be in profit.
The research was carried out by Fast Track between 15 April and 15 August 2004. All of the companies were interviewed by telephone and in addition the majority were also visited by the Fast Track research team.
About Fast Track
Fast Track is an Oxford-based research, publishing and networking events company that tracks Britain’s top-performing private companies. In addition to the Tech Track 100 it also produces the Fast Track 100 league table, which is based on sales growth, the Profit Track 100, which is based on profit growth and the Top Track 100 ranking of the Britain’s largest unquoted companies. Fast Track was set up and is run by Dr Hamish Stevenson, who is also an associate fellow of Templeton College, Oxford University.