A round-up of the One Nucleus Annual Award ambitions and shortlisted entries ahead of the celebratory dinner on 27 March 2025 in London.
By Tony Jones, CEO, One Nucleus
Announcing the Shortlist for the One Nucleus Awards 2025!
We’re thrilled to unveil the finalists for this year’s One Nucleus Awards, celebrating outstanding progress across R&D, investment, services, and innovation. These awards recognise the pioneers and trailblazers shaping the future of life sciences.
The One Nucleus Annual Awards, from their inception, were created to place excellence in the spotlight from across the life science ecosystem. Whilst subsets of the sector are often singled out, it is clear that all are required to navigate the long journey from great research to better patient outcomes. The common factor across all the parts of the sector is that excellence is an essential ingredient for success.
It is pleasing to have seen record entry levels for these annual awards, which have now been scored by a plethora of judges to arrive at the shortlists set out below.
Join us at the Black-tie Awards Dinner
A special thank-you to our thirty-two esteemed judges for their time and expertise in selecting this year’s shortlist.
For full event details, visit: Annual Awards Dinner, or for further information, please email info@onenucleus.com
✨ Best Professional Services Company
The life sciences professional services market is a growing sector that provides consulting services to the healthcare, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical industries. The market is expected to continue to grow due to advancements in technology and the increasing complexity of regulations.
|
Definition: Any business or individual whose core output is the provision of advisory services or expertise to others on a fee-for-service basis |
The 2025 Shortlist | |
|
Award Criteria:
|
 |
ip21 takes a holistic consultative approach to IP advice to ensure that strategic planning, rights registration, portfolio management, and enforcement are always aligned with ultimate commercial objectives. best practice IP services. |
 |
RSSL is a cutting-edge food and pharmaceutical research company, pushing the boundaries of science and innovation to help make our world safer, healthier and more sustainable. |
|
 |
SRG exists to enable exciting futures across STEM, where our people and partners thrive to achieve amazing things together. |
|
Thank you to those making the Annual Awards 2024 a success, and particular congratulations to Dr Angela Miller, LifeArc, who received the Outstanding Contribution to Life Sciences Award.
🔬 Non-Profit Research Organisation
Whether charitable, philanthropic, or governmental, non-profit funding of medical research is to lay the foundations for groundbreaking new discoveries and life-changing advances, often in areas that are underfunded.
From the Association of Medical Research Charities 2024 Report:
150: Number of current AMRC member charities, as of June 2024.
£1.7bn: Collective research spend in the UK for the financial year ending in 2023 by AMRC member charities
27%: Proportion of non-commercial clinical trials in UK-funded by AMRC members
64%: Proportion of AMRC members who funded research in collaboration with other organisations.
|
Definition: Those institutions, funded by one or more of government funding, donations, industry collaborations, grants, or others that undertake directly or fund via grants laboratory research in biomedicine towards new therapies |
The 2025 Shortlist | |
|
Award Criteria:
|
 |
Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC) is a national Life Sciences service that reshapes drug discovery for patient benefit by transforming the best of UK science into better treatments. |
 |
A world-leading cancer research institute, a charity, and a member institution of the University of London. Public donations and clinical partnerships are helping ICR to make the discoveries that defeat cancer. https://www.icr.ac.uk/ |
|
 |
Tackling some of the most difficult challenges in genomic research. This demands science at scale; a visionary and creative approach to research that pushes the boundaries of our understanding in ever new and exciting ways. https://www.sanger.ac.uk/ |
|
🧪R&D Services Provider
According to Precedence Research, the global biotechnology and pharmaceutical services outsourcing market size is calculated at $51.53 billion in 2025 and is forecasted to reach around $85.74 billion by 2034, accelerating at a CAGR of 5.82% from 2025 to 2034.
- Asia Pacific dominated the global biotechnology and pharmaceutical services outsourcing market with the largest market share of 43% in 2024.
- By services outsourcing, the pharma segment contributed the highest market share of 77% in 2024.
- By services outsourcing, the biotech segment is projected to grow at a solid rate during the forecast period.
- By services, the consulting segment accounted for the highest market share in 2024.
|
Definition: Those organisations operating on a fee-for-service basis to provide one or more of research, development, manufacturing, or clinical research services to other life science companies. |
The 2025 Shortlist | |
|
Award Criteria:
Effective ESG (environment, social, governance) strategy |
 |
o2h discovery has an integrated drug discovery platform operating from its state-of-the-art research centres in Ahmedabad, India and The Mill SciTech Park, Cambridge, UK. https://o2hdiscovery.co/ |
 |
Qkine actively supports the stem cell sector by manufacturing highly bioactive and animal origin-free recombinant proteins that will improve efficiency in budget allocation and the reproducibility of your cell cultures. https://qkine.com/ |
|
 |
We provide a leading drug discovery and development platform offering a cutting-edge technology toolkit and a comprehensive suite of services under one roof. https://www.rxcelerate.com/ |
|
🏗️ R&D Facility Provider
Real estate investor sentiment for life sciences has remained positive over the last 12 months, despite the broader economic challenges facing all sectors. Transactional volumes were 74% down versus 2022, impacted by broader economic conditions, but also reflective of many shifting their focus from acquisition to delivery. We expect this to continue into 2024 with investments centred around established science and technology assets, particularly in Tier 1 locations.
|
Definition: Those innovatively providing high-quality, sustainable, flexible space solutions to support life science companies, whether new build or retrofitting. |
The 2025 Shortlist | |
|
Award Criteria:
|
 |
The Babraham Research Campus is a leading location that supports early-stage bioscience enterprise and is distinct in its co-location of bioscience companies with the world leading discovery research of the Babraham Institute. https://www.babraham.com/ |
 |
Canary Wharf Group (CWG) is the developer of the largest urban regeneration project in Europe. CWG develops, manages and currently owns interests in approximately 9 million square feet of mixed-use space and over 1,100 Build to Rent apartments. https://group.canarywharf.com/ |
|
 |
World class capabilities in cell and gene technologies. Companies based on Campus employ over 4,000 people. We are home to major organisations including GSK, the Cell and Gene Therapy Manufacturing Catapult, LifeArc and Cytiva alongside a growing cluster of start-up companies that together have raised over £3.6bn in funding. https://www.stevenagecatalyst.com/ |
|
💡 R&D Platform Development Company
Ahead of ‘The Pharmaceutical Automation and Digitalisation Congress (AUTOMA+) 2024.’ Pharmaceutical Technology reported that as the pharmaceutical industry rapidly transforms, companies seeking to achieve and hold the leading positions on the market should actively engage with emerging innovative technologies. In terms of what those innovative technology areas were, they were deemed key R&D processes available to be impacted by automation as:
- Implementing AI for valuable insights
- Effective Data Analytics and Management
- Advanced Cellular Analysis
|
Definition: Companies developing novel platform technologies to enable new therapeutics R&D |
The 2025 Shortlist | |
|
Award Criteria:
|
 |
Pioneers of genome writing and genetic code reprogramming. Constructive Bio explores unchartered chemical space to build programmable biomolecules beyond what nature can do, with applications across industries. https://www.constructive.bio/ |
 |
We are well-versed in a variety of genomics, AI and cohort analysis techniques. We are also bioinformatics generalists and work with just about any technology encountered in biological research. https://outsee.co.uk/ |
|
 |
Nuclera is the pioneer in bringing rapid protein prototyping to the benchtop. We make proteins accessible through eProtein DiscoveryTM. Through our technology, we accelerate breakthrough improvements in human health and empower life science researchers with easy access to target proteins. |
|
🧬 Therapeutic Discovery Company
Never forgetting the end goal and motivation for all involved in the life sciences sector is to improve patient outcomes through innovative treatments. What did EMA and FDA approve in 2024?
European Medicines Agency approvals included:
- Recommended 114 medicines for marketing authorisation
- 46 had a new active substance never before authorised in the European Union (EU)
- The first medicine to treat early Alzheimer’s disease
- 28 recommendations for new biosimilar products
Federal & Drug Administration approvals included:
- 50 New Therapeutics
- First NASH medicine
- A novel schizophrenia drug
|
Definition: Companies investing their own capital in R&D to discover and develop new therapeutics to improve patient outcomes |
The 2025 Shortlist | |
|
Award Criteria:
|
 |
AviadoBio is relentlessly chasing cures by translating groundbreaking science and precision delivery into potentially life-changing medicines for people living with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) through the potential of gene therapy. https://aviadobio.com/ |
 |
Pioneering regenerative macrophage therapy in inflammatory and fibrotic diseases. The initial focus is in end-stage liver disease. It is the only chronic disease still on the rise in western countries and affects millions of people worldwide. https://resolution-tx.com/ |
|
 |
At the centre of Healx’s approach is their next-generation AI platform we built to find novel connections between drugs and diseases. We combine these predictions with in-house expertise to accelerate new treatments through our pipeline to clinical trials and on to patients. https://healx.ai/ |
|
🚀New Company Creator
Taken from the UK biotech financing 2024 by the Bioindustry Association, company creation and the resultant seed investment accounted for £184M in the UK across 37 deals. A strong performance, where UK-based venture funds were the largest providers of that investment, positioning the UK well to attract international investors into subsequent rounds.
|
Definition: Technology transfer offices, accelerators/incubators, start-up funders, and advisers creating and supporting new ventures. |
The 2025 Shortlist | |
|
Award Criteria:
|
 |
A start-up vision to be the best place in Europe to start up a life sciences venture. Babraham want to support and nurture great science – using knowledge and expertise gained over decades of experience – to inform, elevate and empower new life science innovators and entrepreneurs. https://www.babraham.com/start-ups/ |
 |
Focused on four key outcomes: restorative cultivation, scaling intelligence, the net-zero transition and curative therapeutics. The venture creation methodology results in high-quality, de-risked companies, led by teams with deep technical and commercial experience. https://www.deepscienceventures.com/ |
|
 |
UCLB is the commercialisation company of UCL. We bring to market truly world-leading, life-changing technologies and innovations developed at UCL to provide a positive real-world impact. https://www.uclb.com/ |
|
💰Most Creative Investor
Labiotech recently highlighted Venture capital firms are vital when it comes to helping biotech startups reach new heights, providing both financial and operational support. Some household names in the industry include the likes of Third Rock Ventures, Sofinnova, and OrbiMed. These companies were solely designed to operate as venture capital firms but, over the years, many big pharma and biotech companies have also decided to spin out their own venture capital funds in an effort to scout and invest early in potential acquisitions. The challenging investment landscape over recent years has stimulated, particularly early-stage investors, to be creative in how they invest and structure their deals.
|
Definition: Those individuals or organisations that have demonstrated creativity in dealmaking to attract and deploy capital to life science companies to fund R&D |
The 2025 Shortlist |
|
|
Award Criteria:
|
 |
Albion VC supports visionary founders with long term capita and scale-up expertise. A long term, considerate yet high performing culture, embodied by an inspiring team, half of whom have been doing this for well over a decade. https://albion.vc/ |
 |
Focused on four key outcomes: restorative cultivation, scaling intelligence, the net-zero transition and curative therapeutics. The venture creation methodology results in high-quality, de-risked companies, led by teams with deep technical and commercial experience. https://www.deepscienceventures.com/ |
|
 |
A track record of nurturing and investing in emerging life science and tech companies. The fund will help widen the community of investors that will help expand early-stage research in the UK. https://o2h.com/ | |
