This unique award for 2021 celebrates an innovative solution or product that has helped shape the sectors understanding of, or resilience to COVID-19.

In what has been a remarkable year, through this award we wanted to focus on the positives and celebrate those unique innovations that have allowed companies to succeed, or to contribute to the success and wellbeing of others, in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

We are thrilled to announce that R&D Systems and Novus, both a part of Bio-Techne, have been named winners of the CiteAb COVID-19 Innovation Award.

This award was judged by a panel of life scientists, who were looking for a significant response to COVID-19 that made a real impact. The judges included Director of Product Management at Springer Nature Experiments Robin Padilla, Expert Scientific Writer for Novartis Victoria Sherwood, Professor of Bioscience Education and Technology at the University of Bath Momna Hejmadi, and CEO and founder of CiteAb Dr Andrew Chalmers.

Bio-Techne won this award for its work in releasing new antibodies that supported breakthrough research into COVID-19, and for its efforts in supporting the development of COVID-19 testing. The company worked quickly and closely with a number of stakeholders to achieve a real impact, including with COVID-19 laboratories to access infected human lung tissues and model animal tissue, and with other bioscience organisations to develop COVID-19 antibody test kits.

Dr Andrew Chalmers, founder of CiteAb, said: “We had a lot of impressive entries into this category, and it was heartening to see quite how much of a contribution this sector has made to the global fight against COVID-19. The work of Novus and R&D Systems, under the umbrella of Bio-Techne, really stood out to us as a panel of judges for the sheer amount that had been achieved, and the speed with which the company had developed meaningful working relationships with others. We were also very impressed by the quality of research that the company’s SARS-CoV-2 products had contributed to, demonstrating the large role that was played by Bio-Techne in fighting the pandemic. I wish both Novuc and R&D Systems, and Bio-Techne as a whole, many congratulations on their achievements over the past year, and the very best for continued success in the future.”