Frost & Sullivan recognised Invitrogen as drug discovery company of the Year at last night's 2003 Global Excellence in Healthcare & Life Sciences Awards Banquet in San Diego, USA.

Invitrogen has demonstrated sustained product innovation over the last years but, just as importantly, has been able to translate this into commercial success.

Ciphergen picked up the proteomics award for its ProteinChip technology, which F&S likened to the transition from mainframe to persconal computers in the 1980s in terms of its impact. The SELDI (Surface Enhanced Laser/Desorption Ionisation)-based system has provided a real advance in accurate and sensitive identification of proteins in a clinical or research setting, according to F&S.

The instrument category award went to Thermo Electron, not for any particular offering but for the comprehensive range of products and services that it supports. One held up by F&S for particular merit was Thermo's 'New Labs' program, that offers researchers virtually everything they need to outfit a lab, from equipment used to prepare and store samples, to systems that analyse the samples and software that gathers and manages all the data.

Other award recipients included: Roche Diagnostics in the in vitro diagnostics category; Toshiba Medical for its Aquilion 16 multi-slice CT scanner in the medical diagnostics category; and LOM Medical for its gas cell technology for retractable syringes in the medical device category.