OXFORD VACCINE GROUP WINS ACCOLADE AT BRITISH BUSINESS EXCELLENCE AWARDS

Oxford Vaccine Group has won a prestigious accolade at the Lloyds Bank British Business Excellence Awards.

The company was rewarded for its Outstanding Contribution to British Business for helping to get the UK back on its feet after the pandemic.

Thanks to the hard work and determination of companies like Oxford Vaccine Group, 104 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered – 87.6 million of those in England alone.

Associate Professor Teressa Lambe OBE said: “I’d like to say a massive thank you to the whole team for the continued support, helping us achieve what we have achieved.

"This award gives us the recognition we need and deserve. As a company, we worked really hard across the pandemic to help get us out of it and to help get people and businesses back to normal, which during the heights, seemed like an impossible task.

“We hope that winning this award and the success of the Oxford vaccine can put a spotlight on what the UK can do as a whole, promoting our ethos.

"Our focus as a company is on the people, the people we invest in and the people who incorporate the knowledge for future generations to be able to tackle future diseases.”

Oxford University breaks spinout records

Oxford University Innovation (OUI) created 31 new spin-out companies over the past year, setting a new record for company creation at the university.

And companies created through OUI have raised more than £1.1 billion during the period, a 29 per cent increase from 2020’s previous record.

The figure puts Oxford University firmly into the number one spot for company creation in the UK, compared to other universities.

Globally, based on recently published figures for company creation from tech transfer organisations, Oxford is presently ranked number two, second only to Switzerland’s ETH Zurich which has 34.

In addition, Oxford Nanopore launching on the London Stock Exchange last year marked the most successful IPO exit for a UK spin-out to date, and fifth-largest globally for any spin-out, according to data from Global University Venturing.

Oxford University Innovation has published its annual review of a year which it says has also been its most challenging.

The review is dedicated to the memory of Oxford University Innovation’s Dr Jamie Ferguson, who died from Covid-19 in August 2020.

Medtech smashes crowdfunding target

Active Needle Technology Ltd, the medical device company developing an innovative needle-actuating device to reduce needle placement errors in ultrasound guided procedures, has smashed its crowdfunding target of £150,000.

At the beginning of December last year, the Culham Science Centrebased company had so far raised more than £321,000 on Crowdcube.

Active Needle is exploiting the properties of ultrasonically active needles. The technology allows the products to have potential applications in a range of multi-billion-pound markets. These global markets could include healthcare, life sciences, medical and non-medical tattooing.

The technology is the outcome of the research work carried out by Dr Muhammad Sadiq, a biomedical engineer and RSE enterprise fellow, and Professor Graeme McLeod, a consultant anaesthetist at Ninewells Hospital and the University of Dundee.

Active Needle’s patented technology is a hand-held piezoelectric that interfaces with single-use medical needles to induce minute longitudinal ultrasonic vibration.

The device, which has been developed in conjunction with clinical colleagues, consists of disposable and durable parts. A durable driver unit vibrates the disposable needle at ultrasonic frequencies leading to enhanced visibility and reduced deflection of standard needles under laboratory conditions.

The adoption of Active Needle’s technology in clinical practice offers the potential of significant health economic and clinical benefits to drive shared value for investors, patients, clinicians and healthcare providers and payers.