In a sector that is always pushing boundaries to drive research forward, our Innovation Award looks to celebrate a particularly impressive research product which is satisfying a gap in the market or solving a known issue in the life sciences.

Congratulations to Bio-Techne for their win in this category with their RNAscope HiPlex12 Flex Kit!

This kit enables high-plex spatial co-detection of RNA and protein markers for the Standard BioTools Hyperion™ Imaging Mass Cytometry (IMC) System. This technology caught our judges' eye as a really powerful research tool to help advance discovery.

RNAscope has over 8,000 peer-reviewed publications - showing it to be a popular choice for researchers performing in situ hybridization. IMC is an innovative technology that can facilitate the detection and quantification of 40+ biomarkers (overcoming limitations such as spectral overlaps in fluorescence imaging). For this new kit Maxpar Antibodies from Standard BioTools can be incorporated during sample preparation, to enable researchers to understand cell phenotype changes and function for multiple disease states.

By combining the power of these two technologies the potential impact is immense, from furthering understanding of drug efficacy to supporting novel biomarker discoveries.

Our judges commented on the high quality of nominations this year, with many demonstrating really impressive potential impact to the life sciences. Thank you to all nominators, and congratulations once again to Bio-Techne!

The judges:

• Lena D'Hooghe: Principal Scientist at UCB
• Asel Sartbaeva: Dr Sartbaeva is a chemistry researcher at Bath and CEO of EnsiliTech
• Victoria Sherwood: Vicky is a Scientific and Medical writer and host of the STEM careers blog, Biomed Badass