29 May 2014
The winners of BioMed Central’s 8th Annual Research Award were announced last night at the Metabolism, Diet and Disease: Cancer and metabolism conference last night at the Georgetown University Hotel and conference center, Washington DC.
The awards honor the very best research published in one of BioMed Central’s 250 plus open access journals in 2013. The overall BioMed Central Research Award, supported by antibodies-online.com, was selected from a shortlist consisting of the winners of ten subject categories.
After months of whittling down nominations, the judges declared the overall winners Ellen Heitzer and Michael Speicher from the Medical University of Graz, Austria, and their fellow researchers, for their article investigating markers of prostate cancer, published in Genome Medicine.
Heitzer and Speicher’s research focuses on cancer; specifically the hunt for mutations in tumor genomes. Accolades came for the improvements they made to methods involving sequencing DNA from easily accessible fluids; the ‘liquid-biopsy approach’ rather than taking a tumor biopsy. Using a benchtop high-throughput sequencing instrument the team were able to examine the DNA circulating in the plasma of cancer patients more rapidly and cheaply than previous studies without compromising accuracy. Their research is particularly focused on prostate cancer, the sixth leading cause of cancer-related death in men worldwide.
Ellen Heitzer says: “It's a great honor to receive this award, because I think that non-invasive cancer diagnosis is truly a growing field. It's important to have techniques to get genomic follow up data, especially when the area of personalised medicine is growing, and becoming so important for cancer patients themselves. Of course, I want to thank my colleagues at the Institute of Human Genetics and also the clinicians and patients at the department of urology as this is where we get our samples, which is so crucial to establishing these techniques.”
Dr. Andreas Kessell, co-founder of antibodies-online.com, which sponsored the award, says: “At antibodies-online.com we help scientists to find and order highly validated products for their cutting edge research projects. Chosen from a shortlist of ten category award winners, the overall research award honors outstanding research published by BioMed Central in 2013. We are excited to sponsor the BioMed Central Annual Research Award for the second time, as it brings an opportunity to advance research in the life sciences. antibodies-online.com thanks all participants in advancing research for a better life and compliments this year's winners.”
Deborah Kahn, Executive Vice President Publishing at BioMed Central, says: “Once again our judges were fantastic and deserve thanks for the time and energy they have devoted to the Research Awards. I want to congratulate the winners on their excellent research and look forward to seeing its future progression.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Ruth Francis
Head of Communications Open Access and UK
Springer Science+Business Media
Tel: +44 20 31922737
Email: ruth.francis@springer.com
Patrik von Glasow
Public Relations Manager
antibodies-online Inc.
Tel: +1 404 474 4654
Fax: +1 888 205 9894
Email: patrik.vonglasow@antibodies-online.com
Notes to editors
BioMed Central is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the open access publishing model. All peer-reviewed research articles published by BioMed Central are made immediately and freely accessible online, and are licensed to allow redistribution and reuse. BioMed Central is part of Springer Science+Business Media, a leading global publisher in the STM sector.
antibodies-online.com (http://www.antibodies-online.com/). With more than 1,000,000 products antibodies-online.com is the biggest distributor for proteomics research worldwide, serving customers in 53 countries. The websites www.antibodies-online.com, www.antikoerper-online.de, www.anticorps-enligne.fr and http://www.antibodies-online.cn help scientis to find, order and apply the right life science products for their research project. They offer the fastest search on the web, smart filters and compare lists. Scientists find the rich product data and descriptions useful – as the database contains approx. 60,000 publication references and 200,000 product images.
Founded in 2006 as university spin-off in Aachen (Germany), antibodies-online.com now employs over 60 people. Today it has a presence in Atlanta (USA), Aachen (Germany) and Shanghai (China). In 2013 antibodies-online co-initiated the “Independent Validation Initiative” to increase transparency in research reagent quality.