Editorial Article: Life Sciences Scientists' Choice Awards winners announced during Virtual Summit

The winners of the 2020 Scientists’ Choice Awards for Life Sciences have been announced live from the inaugural SelectScience Virtual Summit on Cancer and Immunology Research. Once again, scientists around the globe were invited to participate by nominating, reviewing and voting for the best lab products in the field.

Following the postponement of physical conferences as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, the winners and nominees of these prestigious awards were recognized at a special online ceremony held during the SelectScience^® Virtual Summit on Cancer and Immunology Research 2020. The summit highlighted the latest innovations in cancer and immunology research from institutions all over the world and featured talks by top scientists and technology innovators. Read on to discover this year’s award winners.

Best New Life Sciences Product of 2019 

Nominated and voted for by scientists across the globe, the award for Best New Life Sciences Product of 2019 went to the DeNovix CellDrop™ Cell Counter, from DeNovix. With a drive towards sustainability and reducing the environmental impact of the laboratory, the DeNovix CellDrop™ Cell Counter, with its unique DirectPipette™ Technology, incorporates a novel sample loading method that eliminates the need for disposable plastic slides typically required for routine cell counting. The CellDrop features both dual fluorescence and brightfield optics and a variable height chamber, enabling accurate measurement across a wide range of cell densities and sizes. Additionally, its easy-to-use software and 7″ touchscreen interface enable users to perform and manage applications with ease across multiple users.
It held off a strong field featuring a further 11 shortlisted products. 

The 11 runners-up were:

• Vi-CELL BLU Cell Viability Analyzer, from Beckman Coulter
• SureCell ATAC-Seq Library Prep Kit, from Bio-Rad
• CLARIOstar^® PLUS Multi-Mode Microplate Reader, from BMG LABTECH
• GeoMx^® Digital Spatial Profiler, from NanoString
• Cellaca MX High-Throughput Cell Counter, from Nexcelom Bioscience
• scanR 3.1 High-Content Screening Station, from Olympus Life Science
• MuviCyte Live-Cell Imaging System, from PerkinElmer, Inc.
• ID7000™ Spectral Cell Analyzer, from Sony Biotechnology
• NGS DreamPrep™ Workstation, from Tecan
• Gibco™ BenchStable™ Cell Culture Media, from Thermo Fisher Scientific
• SELECT SERIES Cyclic™ Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry System, from Waters

Life Sciences Video Interview of the Year - in association with The Scientists'​ Channel

This year’s winning video, ‘A novel target to inhibit glioblastoma invasion’, was an interview featuring Dr. Aleksandra Dukic, postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Cancer Research, Oslo University Hospital.

In the film, Dukic describes a novel target for inhibiting glioblastoma cancer invasion into surrounding brain tissue and the importance of this work in addressing the need for innovative therapeutics to combat this aggressive cancer. Hear how the culture and analysis of glioblastoma patient-derived cells are vital to her work.

Runners-up for Life Sciences Video Interview of the Year included a video interview with Prof. Jane Dyson, Scripps Research Institute, describing her work using NMR to investigate intrinsically disordered proteins and cell functionality, and an interview with Dr. Theodossis Theodossiou, Institute for Cancer Research, Oslo University Hospital, on the photodynamic treatment of cancer.

Reviewers’ Choice Award™ for Life Sciences Company of the Year

Picking up this award, Zymo Research provides innovative, reliable, and high-quality laboratory tools for DNA, RNA, and epigenetic research. Although historically recognized for its innovative DNA and RNA purification technologies, Zymo Research has recently received much attention for its rapidly expanding epigenetics portfolio of products.

Branding itself “The Epigenetics Company”, it is their objective to develop and provide the most comprehensive set of research tools for DNA methylation analysis and epigenetics research available today. Zymo Research won the Reviewers' Choice Life Sciences Company of the Year award in recognition of the amount of positive feedback it has received from scientists sharing their opinions on the SelectScience website over the past year.

Life Sciences Article of the Year

In this years' winning article, Dr. Eric Tran & Miranda Gilchrist,  from the Providence Cancer Institute, and Andrew Berger, from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center​,  highlight their work exploring the promising approach of using adoptive immunotherapy to fight cancer.

The article, titled ‘Isolating T Cells for Adoptive Immunotherapy’ and produced in association with Sony Biotechnology, demonstrates the advantages of adoptive T-cell immunotherapy and its process optimizing using efficient and easy-to-use flow cytometry technology. Within, Tran remarks: "It has now been demonstrated that immunotherapy can actually mediate durable responses, and sometimes cures, in these otherwise incurable cases."

Runners-up for Life Sciences Article of the Year were; Microglia and brain disease – The good, the bad and the good that turns bad – an interview with Dr. Timothy Hammond, Sanofi (formerly Boston Children’s Hospital); and Next-Generation Immunotherapy: Combining virus-specific T Cells with other immuno-oncology technologies to treat solid tumors, featuring the work of Dr. John Connolly, CSO, Tessa Therapeutics.

Application eBook of the Year

Application eBooks are a popular new SelectScience feature which aim to provide scientists with a range of useful resources on a certain topic, packaged into an affordable and engaging downloadable guide. In this category, the winner was our ‘Ultimate cell culture workflow compendium’ eBook, produced in partnership with Sartorius Group, which pulls together everything you need to ensure successful cell culture in your lab, including a range of compatible products and guides on how to use them most effectively.

Runners-up for Life Sciences Application eBook of the Year were Live-cell analysis: From culture to assay and Microbial detection: Solutions for microbiology quality control.

Life Sciences Webinar of the Year

The Webinar of the Year was ‘The journey from metabolomics to mechanisms with mass spectrometry’. Presented by Dr. Nicola Zamboni, from the Institute for Molecular System Biology, ETH Zurich, and in association with Agilent Technologies, the winning webinar showcases how mass spectrometry can be used investigate metabolic networks and how it has been utilized in research for more than two decades, for its speed, sensitivity, robustness, coverage, and flexibility.

Runners up for Life Sciences Webinar of the Year were; From boutique to global chimeric antigen receptor T Cells as a model for dlinical development and commercialization, presented by Dr. Bruce Levine, University of Pennsylvania, in association with Sartorius Group; and Sample preparation and cell isolation for multiplexed single cell sequencing analysis, presented by Cole Jones, 10x Genomics and Dr. Deena Soni, Sony Biotechnology.

Life Sciences Email of the Year

Miltenyi Biotec collected this year’s award for the email 'Help shape the future of cell-based assays.’  The winning email was promoting a survey of cell biologists to learn more about the latest practices and trends in cell-based assay techniques and technologies, while also raising money for a great cause, the American Association of Cancer Research Foundation (AACR).

Runners-up for Life Sciences Email of the Year were an email by Corning Life Sciences covering the future of 3D cell culture and featuring an interview with Dr. Tram Ngo, Senior Associate Scientist at the SBP Medical Discovery Institute, and this email from Sartorius Group, which highlighted a downloadable infographic on developing monoclonal antibodies.

Reviewers' Choice Award: Life Sciences Customer Service of the Year

The Customer Service of the Year award went to DeNovix in recognition of achieving the highest after-sales service review rating on SelectScience. DeNovix CEO Fred Kielhorn said: "We are very proud to be awarded the Reviewers’ Choice Award for Life Sciences Customer Service of the Year. At DeNovix we understand that our instruments and assays are used at critical points in laboratory workflows. It is key to the DeNovix approach to the life science market that when our customers require our support they receive a fast resolution. Having our applications, software and engineering teams working closely together and focused on our customers enables us to achieve this.

Visit the Scientists' Choice Awards website for more information.