A REVOLUTIONARY technological breakthrough by a York company has been recognised with a major international award.

Xceleron Ltd, the University of York spin-off company, is runner-up in the biotech-medical category of the Wall Street Journal Europe Innovation Award.

Xceleron uses a 20-ton machine called an accelerator mass spectrometer to change the way clinical trials of new drugs are carried out by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

It beat more than 130 edge-of-science ventures from all over Europe, Africa and Asia.

Professor Colin Garner, Xceleron's chief executive received the award with June Garner, his quality/operations manager, at an awards ceremony at London's Lanesborough Hotel in Park Lane.

He said: "This award recognises Xceleron's introduction of the novel enabling technology of accelerator mass spectrometry which speeds up clinical trials, reduces the use of animals in drug testing, especially primates, and makes clinical trials safer."

The £2.75 million machine, which measures isotopes at individual atom level by generating millions of volts, took two years to build at the Government's Central Science Laboratory in Sand Hutton.

While Xceleron, which recently changed its name from CBAMS, moved into the new Biocentre at York Science Park in March, it continues to use the accelerator mass spectrometer at Sand Hutton.

One estimate of the cost of bringing a new drug to the market is $800 million and takes between 10 and 12 years.

Using the machine to create a technique called microdosing, it allows only tiny amounts of new drugs to be given safely to human volunteers, giving drug manufacturers better-informed choices when selecting drugs to develop in full clinical trials.

It could also save the pharmaceutical and biotechnical industries worldwide up to $10 billion

The approach has been endorsed by the European Medicine's Evaluation Agency - the continent's regulatory authority for registering new drugs.

Updated: 09:53 Tuesday, December 02, 2003