News archive 2005

Times Higher award for King's

24 Nov 2005, PR 102/05

At the first Times Higher Awards Ceremony held yesterday (23 November) the ‘Business Initiative of the Year' category was won by King's drug discovery and development spin-out company, Proximagen Neuroscience.

The event received widespread support including Prime Minister Tony Blair recording a special video message for the ceremony in which he hailed the achievements of the UK's world-beating higher education institutions.

Prizes were presented by a number of distinguished guests including Bill Rammell, Minister for Higher Education, and Colin Blakemore, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council.

Peter Jenner, Professor of Pharmacology, established Proximagen in 2003 to seek new treatments for neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

Earlier this year, working with Kenneth Mulvany, the company was floated on the Alternative Investment Market, raising £13.5 million with the result that Proximagen is valued at £30 million.

Richard Lomer, regional sales manager of Infocus, sponsor of the award, commented: ‘It is important to acknowledge great vision and dedication, not just to a business idea but to improving people's lives. Proximagen has grown from small beginnings to great results. Peter Jenner and his team richly deserve this recognition from their peers.'

Proximagen does not promise to cure Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease. Instead it aims to build on Professor Jenner's research with the goal of developing novel approaches to treatment and testing to relieve the most severe symptoms and side-effects of these neurodegenerative conditions. One of its programmes focuses on a protein in the brain that helps to protect nerve cells.

Professor Jenner said: ‘We are absolutely delighted to have won this award. Proximagen is a great example of the partnership that can be created between the College and the commercial world. The rapid growth and success of Proximagen is due to the entrepreneurial spirit developed at King's by KCL Enterprises in conjunction with the university investment group IP2IP0.'

Dr Patricia Reynolds, Senior Lecturer in the Dental Institute, was also a shortlisted finalist in these inaugural Times Higher awards in the ‘Imaginative Use of Distance Learning' category. Together with Professor Margaret Cox (Dental Institute Research Fellow), Dr Reynolds is leading the development of two online dental courses: one on ethics for first-year students and one on therapeutics for fifth-year students at King's.

Notes to editors

King's College London
King's College London is one of the two oldest and largest colleges of the University of London with over 13,800 undergraduate students and nearly 5,700 postgraduates in nine schools of study. It is a member of the Russell Group: a coalition of the UK's major research-based universities. The College has had 24 of its subject-areas awarded the highest rating of 5* and 5 for research quality, demonstrating excellence at an international level, and it has recently received an excellent result in its audit by the Quality Assurance Agency.

King's is in the top group of UK universities for research earnings, with income from grants and contracts of £100 million, and has an annual turnover of more than £348 million. In 2004 the College was once again awarded an AA- financial credit rating from Standard & Poor's.





Further information
Public Relations Department
Email: pr@kcl.ac.uk
Tel: 020 7848 3202

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