ÄKTA start, a compact, affordable and easy-to-use preparative chromatography system for laboratory-scale protein purification by GE Healthcare Life Sciences, a business unit of GE Healthcare (NYSE: GE), has been awarded the prestigious Scientists' Choice Award. ÄKTA start was announced as the winner of 'Best New Separations Product of 2013' award during a ceremony held at the Pittcon 2014 Conference and Expo in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

The Scientists' Choice Award is conducted annually by SelectScience, an independent, expert-led scientific review resource for the worldwide scientific community. The awards enable scientists around the world to voice their opinions on the best laboratory products. This year's Scientists' Choice Awards attracted over 2,500 nominations and votes from scientists around the world.

Kerry Parker, Editor-in-Chief of SelectScience, said, "We are delighted to recognize the new products that have made a real difference to laboratory work in 2013. We received a huge number of nominations and votes, which confirms what a successful year it has been for innovative laboratory products."

ÄKTA start, launched in December 2013 is the latest addition to GE's new generation of ÄKTA systems and is the first Life Sciences product designed and developed by the company's research and development center in India, for the world. GE Healthcare has various products in medical technology innovation in India with over 125 product innovations and 25 complete products coming out of its John F Welch Innovation Centre, Bangalore.

Anurag Gupta, managing director, Life Sciences, GE Healthcare, India, said, "This is truly an outstanding recognition for our solution. ÄKTA start breaks new ground as it improves affordability and helps to accelerate research and innovation not only in India but also globally. We are excited that scientists around the world have recognized the potential of this solution. We would like to thank those over 400 enthusiastic scientists and manual users who provided us feedback, insights and direction in designing this simple, easy to use protein purification system"

Protein purification is a laborious process that isolates a single type of protein from a complex biological mixture, and is essential in developing bio-pharmaceutical drugs used in the treatment of diseases such as cancer, viral diseases and when developing vaccines. ÄKTA start helps researchers eliminate the hassle of manual protein purification, while providing automated control of the purification procedure.

Its affordability will allow more researchers to take advantage of GE Healthcare Life Sciences' protein purification expertise and experience.