It is the second time in recent years that Horizon has taken the major title but, given the international muscle of the leading contenders, this year’s achievement ranks as the most outstanding.
CEO Dr Darrin Disley received the award from guest speaker Tony Purnell, head of technology development at British Cylcing, and immediately dedicated it to the inspirational Dr Geraldine Rodgers. He also revealed that Horizon was funding a new bioscience masters degree course at Cambridge University in her name. Geraldine died of lung cancer in January.
Dr Disley said: “Horizon would not have come into existence were it not for the courage of Geraldine, formerly business manager at the Institute of Biotechnology and then head of seed funds at Cambridge Enterprise.
“In March 2008, along with Dr Jonathan Milner, she backed a £150,000 investment into an orphan project where the technology did not come from the UK let alone Cambridge.
“Her past relationship with myself, dating back to 1992, led to my introduction to scientific founder Dr Chris Torrance and the rest is history. All at Horizon would like to dedicate this win to her memory. We have agreed with the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology to create a new ‘full-ride’ scholarship to be awarded annually for study on the Masters in Bioscience Enterprise degree – a course Geraldine was instrumental in setting-up and was a passionate contributor to.
“The first scholar will be selected in the 2015/15 academic year and will target a candidate from an economically disadvantaged background. This is a fitting tribute to her memory and her penchant for backing the underdog that no one else would.”
Explaining to a packed audience of executives why Horizon took the major honours, Ian Mather of law firm Mills & Reeve said: “Horizon’s ambition is to become Cambridge’s biggest ever biotech company and they are certainly going about it in the right way. Horizon has become a world leader in gene editing tools and expertise and its global partnerships are helping to accelerate progress towards personalised medicines.
“Its March 2014 IPO was 6.5 per cent oversubscribed making it the largest float by a life science company from the local cluster. The IPO returned 32X for investors. Horizon grew 2014 revenues by more than 77 per cent year-on-year. Horizon’s market cap also rocketed 244 per cent in the year – from £45m to £155m and has since gone further north towards the £200m landmark.
“Horizon technology has been adopted by over 1,000 academic, biotech, diagnostic and pharma customers in more than 50 countries. During the year Horizon worked with 30 of the world’s top 50 pharmaceutical companies.”
Click here to read about the rest of the winners at yesterday's awards ceremony