Partner Article

XCellR8 recognised with international Lush award

Sci-Tech Daresbury company XCellR8 has won an international award for its ground-breaking contributions to the replacement of animals in testing.

The Lush Prize is a major initiative by the international cosmetic giant, Lush, which encourages the development of new techniques to enable cosmetic safety testing without using animals.

XCellR8, which offers a range of tests using human cell culture models, rather than testing on live animals, beat over 200 other entrants to take the Lush Training Prize 2013.

This year’s awards ceremony and preceding conference, 21st Century Compassion, took place in London on November 13. The company was recognised for its work in training young scientists to use the innovative methods which it has helped to develop and implement.

XCellR8’s founder, Dr Carol Barker-Treasure, presented at the conference and accepted the training award on behalf of the company. She said: “We are absolutely thrilled to receive this recognition for our training activities, which the XCellR8 team has worked hard to develop over the past five years.

“It is crucial to educate the next generation of scientists about the ethical and scientific benefits of using human cell based alternatives to traditional animal tests. By enabling young scientists to take this knowledge forward into their careers, our goal is to help reduce the number of scientists resorting to unethical and outdated animal test methods in the future.”

The company’s work to design events that are accessible to students and young researchers, including its annual Fast Trainevent was highlighted during the ceremony. The prestigious award includes a £25,000 cash prize, which will be used to further expand this work.

John Leake, from Sci-Tech Daresbury, said: “This is a fantastic result for XCellR8 and we’re delighted for the team – this is a company which is continually pushing the boundaries of traditional industry processes and developing innovative new methods and techniques – which they’re also sharing with the next generation.

“We’re very proud to have companies of XCellR8’s ilk based at Sci-Tech Daresbury, their approach exemplifies the site’s culture of open innovation and collaboration and it’s great to see the team’s efforts recognised with this award.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .