Applied Biosystems company wins AmeriStar Award

Applied Biosystems company Invitrogen has been given the AmeriStar Award for design.

The firm, which is a division of Life Technologies, took the honour for its GIBCO cell culture bottle – which was launched in October 2008.

It was hoped that the container would offer an improved storage solution for scientists that could also provide a reduced threat of sample contamination in cell culture experiments.

The AmeriStar Package Award is given by the Institute of Packaging Professionals and according to a spokesman for Invitrogen is representative of all the hard work that went in to its development.

Vice-president and general manager for the group’s Cell Culture Essentials business unit, Todd Laird, noted: "After extensive observations … our team developed a new solution that resulted in a true breakthrough in user-centric design that transforms the way scientists work."

The bottle took three years to develop in association with global design consultancy IDEO.

Life Technologies is a group which emerged following the Applied Biosciences merger with Invitrogen in November last year.