LEEDS, England, April 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Lhasa Limited, a Yorkshire based scientific software developer, is thrilled to announce that it has been recognised as one of the select businesses to be awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise in 2016. These awards are approved by Her Majesty The Queen and are the UK's highest accolade for business success. Awarded for Innovation, this honour is in recognition of Lhasa's innovative development of the expert knowledge-based software system, Derek Nexus, for the prediction of toxicity.
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Created in-house and released in 2010, Derek Nexus is widely used by the pharmaceutical, chemical, cosmetic and related industries and allows scientists to rapidly assess the toxicity of chemical compounds. Its transparent and scientifically robust approach enables organisations to make decisions about their compounds, can reduce animal testing and shorten development cycles leading to the earlier market availability of safe, new chemical entities.
Founded in 1983 as a not-for-profit organisation and educational charity to assist in the collaborative development and use of computer aided reasoning in scientific software, Lhasa was initially based within the Chemistry department at the University of Leeds and employed only a handful of scientists. Today Lhasa is a truly global organisation employing just over 120 people with the majority based at its Yorkshire head office at Granary Wharf in Leeds city centre.
Lhasa's investment in research and development has resulted in an impressive and growing software portfolio that offers expert assistance to scientific researchers, enabling them to make more informed decisions about new chemical compounds. The success of the current software portfolio combined with the imminent launch of two further, innovative software systems means that Lhasa is always looking for highly motivated Yorkshire based software developers and scientists to bring fresh ideas to this exciting field.
Commenting on the award, Lhasa Limited CEO Dave Watson, said, "On Her Majesty The Queen's 90th birthday, I am delighted that Lhasa Limited has received this prestigious award. In the last 5 years, 12 companies from Yorkshire and the Humber have received a Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation and we are proud to join this exclusive club. Since Lhasa was founded in 1983, scientific software development has been our core focus and we continue to engage in cutting edge, scientific research to develop innovative new software solutions and the receipt of this award is an acknowledgement of that. I would like to thank all Lhasa employees who have played a role in the success of Derek Nexus."
The award will be formally presented by the Lord-Lieutenant of West Yorkshire, at Lhasa's offices in Leeds later this year and representatives of Lhasa are looking forward to meeting other award winners at a special reception at Buckingham Palace in July.
About Lhasa Limited
Lhasa Limited is an active, scientific research organisation working to promote the use of computer aided reasoning in chemistry and the life sciences. Our areas of specialisation include the development of software for toxicology and metabolism prediction, and data management. Working closely with Lhasa Limited members and the broader scientific community, Lhasa continues to draw on over 30 years of experience to create user-friendly, state-of-the-art in silico prediction and database systems.
Lhasa Limited was founded on the basis of data and knowledge sharing. Building on its reputation as the eponymous 'honest broker', Lhasa Limited has continued to work on the basis of 'shared knowledge, shared progress' for more than 30 years. Over this time, Lhasa has regularly been trusted with proprietary data and this can be seen in the many successful consortia that we continue to be involved in. The sustained success of such consortia is demonstrative of how working with Lhasa has a positive impact on the research and development process of its members.
Lhasa's products include the Derek Nexus expert system for predicting toxicity, Sarah Nexus, a transparent statistical system for predicting mutagenicity, Vitic Nexus for managing chemical data and information, Meteor Nexus for predicting metabolic fate and Zeneth for predicting forced degradation pathways. More recently, Lhasa Limited has worked with members on the development of Mirabilis, a tool for assessing the relative purging of mutagenic impurities.
Contact: Scott McDonald, +44(0)113-3946020, Scott.McDonald@lhasalimited.org
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