Abcam named ‘Company of the Year’ at 2009 AIM Awards

  • AIM stock exchange celebrates Abcam’s strength of business and potential for growth

Abcam picked up the top prize at the 2009 AIM Awards, winning ‘Company of the Year’. The award, described as the ‘ultimate accolade’ for any company on the AIM market, was announced at the AIM Awards Dinner in London in October 15. It is presented to a company that has demonstrated they are a responsible, fully accountable, dynamic business with excellent potential for growth.

Jonathan Milner, Abcam’s CEO commented: ‘The transformation of Abcam over the past 10 years from a fledgling company selling antibodies out of an ice bucket to being voted AIM company of the year is truly amazing and is in no small part due to the passion and dedication of the staff that have been part of the company over the decade’.

Abcam’s continued growth reflects on our high-quality products and excellent customer service and technical support. Read more about the Abcam story.

AIM company of the year

Jonathan Milner, CEO, collects the award from Emily Maitlis, presenter, Neil Sutton, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deryck Noble-Nesbitt, Close Asset Management Ltd.

AIM is the London Stock Exchange’s international market for smaller growing companies, and combines access to one of the deepest pools of capital in the world with a regulatory framework and approach uniquely suited to smaller companies.

Abcam investor relations

Abcam’s expansion continues with its fourth move on the Cambridge Science Park

  • New headquarters underlines Abcam’s optimism for the future

In June, Abcam opened its new global headquarters at 330 Cambridge Science Park, Cambridge, UK marking the latest step in the company’s expansion.

The new headquarters, at 25,000 sq ft, is double the size of the previous building, which was located just 200 m away. The additional space in the new building will provide sufficient capacity for the company’s anticipated growth over the next few years and allow it to better serve the needs of its customers.

In addition to administrative space, the new building includes sales and marketing functions, customer and technical support, web development and warehousing. With the continually growing catalog now standing at over 52,000 products, the increase in warehousing and logistics facilities was essential.

The new building is supported by Abcam’s own state-of-the-art laboratory, which is also located on the Science Park.

The move to Unit 330 marks the fourth time Abcam has moved to bigger premises on the Science Park, reflecting the company’s impressive track record of growth. Negotiations for the leasehold to the new building were handled by Colliers CRE on behalf of Abcam.

Jim Warwick, Abcam’s Managing Director, commented: ‘This move into new headquarters on the Cambridge Science Park marks another important milestone in the growth of Abcam. The move represents the fourth time that we have relocated to bigger premises on the Science Park and underlines our optimism for the future.’

Jonathan Milner and Jim Warwick

Jim Warwick, Managing Director, and Jonathan Milner, CEO, outside the new Abcam plc offices.

Winners of tenth anniversary competition announced

  • Three lucky labs celebrate Abcam’s tenth anniversary

Dr Fumiko, (Pathology Institute, Tokyo), Dr Koh (Johns Hopkins University) and Dr Smit-Rigter (University of Amsterdam) were announced as the winners of our birthday competition.

Read the full Abcam story.

200th employee hired

Licensing deal signed with Tepnel Life Sciences

  • Two year agreement supports Abcam’s range of kits and other non-antibody products
Over 500 kits now available
Check out our range of kits

Abcam has extended its global licensing agreement with Tepnel Life Sciences. The two year deal means that Abcam will continue to distribute Tepnel’s Diaclone range of products to scientists worldwide.

The agreement supports Abcam’s growing range of non-antibody products, which now includes proteins, peptides, kits, slides and lysates.

Read more about Abcam’s proteins and peptides

Read more about Abcam’s range of ELISA, ELISPOT and ELIPAIR kits

Grand setting for Japanese sub-dealer meetings

  • Events held at the British embassy on Feb 22nd and British Consulate-General on Mar 5th

Sales teams from our seven new Japanese sub-dealers found themselves invited to prestigious venues courtesy of Abcam. Two events were held, one at the British embassy in Tokyo, and one at the British consulate-general in Osaka, to give the sub-dealers an opportunity to learn more about Abcam’s history and the reasons behind our rapid growth. The British embassy (a gift from the Japanese government post Meiji restoration) was in a particularly impressive location. Standing opposite the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo, it made quite a change from the sales teams’ usual destinations!

In Tokyo, the guests were treated to an opening address by the First Secretary Head of Life Sciences, and in Osaka, the Deputy Consul-General. Following this, talks were given on the extensive technical support Abcam offers, including the Abpromise, which the sub-dealers are now able to pass on to their customers. A representative from our marketing team was also present, giving an overview of Abcam’s website, product range and events, along with materials and information specific to the Japanese market.

Molly in Japan

Automated system to expand monoclonal production

Abcam and Beckman Coulter have announced a major bioscience collaboration – to create one of the world’s most sophisticated, automated systems for the production of monoclonal antibodies for use in research.

The move is part of the development of Abcam’s new, multi-million pound laboratory which will provide high throughput monoclonal antibody generation, purification and characterization. This expansion will allow the company to scale up significantly its in-house antibody production, transforming it into a world-leading producer of high-quality monoclonal antibodies to complement its existing catalog.

The key to the expansion is the ability to automate many aspects of hybridoma generation – at the same time as ensuring total quality control and reproducibility of the processes involved. To help make this possible, Abcam has partnered with lab automation experts, Beckman Coulter. The collaboration will involve installing four Biomek automated work stations customised for specific applications, controlled by Abcam’s Advanced SAMI® Workstation EX Software. This integrates all devices and liquid handlers and interleaves actions and plates to achieve maximum throughput.

All workstations are networked by a new Process Management Software and the new Data Acquisition and Repository tool. This allows the flow of data from application to application, managing complex procedures within and across Biomek automated workstations.

Monoclonal antibodies are created using hybridoma technology, first described by Georges Köhler and César Milstein in 1975. While it is already technically possible to produce large numbers of different monoclonal antibody producing cell lines, traditional methods are labor and consumable intensive and time-consuming.

As Jim Warwick, Abcam’s managing director, explained: “We have always produced a number of our own polyclonal antibodies. The extension to making our own monoclonal antibody producing cell lines will enable us to expand greatly our production whilst maintaining the high quality of our products.”

Abcam and leading antibody producer collaborate to make 12,000 rabbit polyclonals

As part of its efforts to continue developing the largest online catalogue of the best antibodies in the world, Abcam has entered into an collaborative agreement with a leading antibody producer to make around 12,000 rabbit polyclonals over the next two years.

The agreement builds on an existing partnership deal with this antibody producer to make 3000 rabbit polyclonals to phospho proteins and the matched non-phospho sites over the next five years. The extended collaboration will enable Abcam to add well characterized antibodies to around 12,000 different unmodified proteins to its catalog, significantly extending coverage of the proteome.

Abcam will be working in close collaboration with this trusted antibody producer to ensure that these antibodies are tested extensively and that detailed images and protocols are available to researchers. The collaboration is complementary to the production of antibodies in-house at the recently opened high-throughput production (HTP) laboratory in Cambridge UK, the first antibodies from which will be available for sale later this calendar year.

CLC bio customized software supports Abcam’s monoclonal development capability

CLC bio and Abcam today announced that CLC bio has met the first important milestone of the two companies’ collaboration: the development of a customized epitope prediction software solution to augment Abcam’s high through-put monoclonal antibody development program.

Through automation of labor intensive manual workflows and by applying expert scientific knowledge, CLC bio’s customized bioinformatics solution ensures a significant reduction in the time-to-market whilst ensuring that the antibodies are of the highest quality.

Dr Catherine Onley, Head of Product Development & Manufacture at Abcam, states: “We searched the market to find the best bioinformatics solution provider for this highly specialized project and I am more than satisfied with CLC bio’s performance. Their skilled IT developers and experienced bioinformatics scientists and project manager have developed an epitope prediction solution that exceeds our expectations. Abcam’s in-house R&D programme will benefit significantly from this. I look forward to the next phase of our collaboration, where we will fully integrate the epitope prediction solution with our LIMS system.”

Dr Jannick D. Bendtsen, project manager and Senior Scientific Officer at CLC bio, said: “We are very proud to help Abcam improve their R&D workflows and performance through this software consulting assignment. From a personal perspective, I’m thrilled to work on this Abcam project as it has been scientifically challenging. I look forward to seeing Abcam improve their competitive edge using this new bioinformatics solution.”

Parts of the epitope prediction functionalities will be included in future versions of CLC Protein Workbench and CLC Combined Workbench, which will facilitate epitope prediction in basic research. The unique Abcam-related work will be kept confidential between the two parties. The customized epitope prediction software follows CLC bio’s concept of providing highly specialized bioinformatics solutions, based on a highly popular and well-proven platform. The Abcam solution is designed as a plug-in that is then fully integrated with the CLC Combined Workbench, CLC bio’s premier desktop-based DNA, RNA, and protein sequence analysis and data management software.

Read more about CLC bio’s customized software solutions