The Scottish Enterprise Life Sciences Awards, held in Edinburgh last night (3 February 2011), celebrated the achievements of a number of successful organisations and individuals over the last year.

The winners were:

• Best new life Sciences company in Scotland - CarieScan Ltd

• Innovation Award - Lynn Garrett , NHS Argyll & Bute as part of NHS Highland

• Life science business leadership - Dave Tudor, GlaxoSmithKline, Montrose

• Outstanding contribution to the growth of Scottish Life Sciences - Professor Sir Ian Wilmut, MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine, Edinburgh

• SHIL award for best innovation originating in NHS Scotland - NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde for its Epaware product

Attended by over 750 people from the life sciences community across Scotland, the awards are a key highlight in the sector’s calendar.

As well as celebrating achievements, the awards also highlighted the ongoing work of Scottish Enterprise and its partners to capitalise the sector’s strengths to grow and develop a sustainable life sciences sector across Scotland.

Congratulating the winners, Rhona Allison, director of Life Sciences at Scottish Enterprise said: “All of the winners of tonight’s awards have been recognised for the valuable contribution they are making to the growth of the sector in Scotland and they should be proud of their success.

“The challenge for now is to build on this momentum and look at where the global opportunities exist for Scotland’s life sciences sector in the future. We need to work with our companies to identify and respond to these opportunities – helping them secure investment, innovate more and crucially – export to new markets.

“We will be working closely with partners in life sciences community to ensure that we take full advantage of these opportunities to attract new talent and investment and create jobs for Scotland.”