Singapore, Mar 6, 2009: Three years ago, the Asia edition of BioSpectrum was launched to chronicle the growth of the Life Sciences in the Asia Pacific region. Since its launch in March 2006 in Singapore, the magazine has attempted to bring an Asian flavor to the world of Life Sciences, dominated for over a century by globe-dominating life science companies, formed in the US and Europe.

The magazine has succeeded to a large extent in this endeavor. Of course, BioSpectrum is not just a magazine. It is an integrated media platform with the content, gathered from all over Asia Pacific and important global information, delivered in print, digital and online formats, to reach out to the thousands of eager business leaders in more than 12 countries in Asia Pacific and a large community of business leaders in Europe and the US.

Three years is a very short time to understand a complex industry like life sciences, which has hundreds of companies providing critical, life saving medical products and services to the humanity. However, in this very short time, the interactions with the industry leaders in the region provided many useful insights into how they all view the role of the industry and their organization’s role in shaping the growth of the sector.

BioSpectrum has featured many of these remarkable companies and their leaders and highlighted their work and their ambitions.

BioSpectrum, first founded in India, in March 2003, has been at the forefront of providing a window to the world into India’s fast growing life sciences sector. And the India edition had introduced the BioSpectrum Awards in 2003 to recognize outstanding contributions by entrepreneurs, policy makers and other key members of the ecosystem in promoting the growth of the industry in one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

With such a successful initiative within the Life Sciences Group of CyberMedia, the publishers of BioSpectrum, it was only a matter of time before the concept was extended to the Asia Pacific region. So, the BioSpectrum Asia Pacific Awards was instituted.

The Awards have well-defined criteria and no nominations are invited. BioSpectrum’s editorial team puts together a five-member international jury, which rigorously evaluated the short list of nominees, put together by the magazine’s research team.

The jury members were  drawn from four countries and were industry leaders to provide critical insights into the industry. The jury members were: Dr Anna Lavelle, CEO of AusBiotech, Melbourne, Dr Shrikumar Suryanarayan, Director-General of Association of Biotechnology-Led Enterprises (ABLE), Bangalore, India, Dr Jeong-Sun Seo, President of KOBIOVEN, Korea. The jury had the excellent insights provided by one of the region’s leading researcher, Dr Edison Liu, Executive Director, GIS, Singapore. Mr E Abraham Mathew, Chief Editor of BioSpectrum who had played a key role in formulating the BioSpectrum success story and also the other CyberMedia magazine awards for the last 20 years, was the fifth member of the jury.

Over several rounds of emails, the jury members chose the winners in the three categories.

The international jury chose the three awards, Life Time Achievement Award, Entrepreneur of the Year Award and Product of the Year Award. BioSpectrum Person of the Year was also chosen. But the awardee, a shy, academic-turned-entrepreneur whose start up company, incubated at one of the leading Asian universities, was not yet ready for the spotlight. BioSpectrum has honored his wishes and kept it aside this time. As all the awardees are chosen unanimously, the process does not involve picking the second person in the list for any Award.

The Awards will be held in different cities of Asia Pacific and in each country, Editor’s Choice awards, not selected by the jury, but by the magazine’s editorial team, will turn the spotlight onto companies we believe will become the winners in the near future.