The Wellington Gold Awards

Stuff reports:

The Malaghan Institute of Medical Research won the supreme The Dominion Post Gold Award at last night's 2014 Wellington Gold Awards.

The institute also won the Cyber Gold category for research into cancer immunology. Awards director John Dow said the institute was “New Zealand's leading independent medical research institute with a 30-year of finding better treatments for cancer, asthma and allergies.

“Their world-class technology underpinned advances in cancer immunology research that led to the prestigious Science [magazine] naming their work the worldwide scientific breakthrough for 2013.

“If they can commercialise their cancer research, and that is the key for them, then you could find that we've got [something like] another on our hands in Wellington.”

The Malaghan Institute are very worth winners. They are world class.

The science theme was evident in other category winners, notably Matakina Technology, which won Global Gold for its hi-tech suite of tools revolutionising breast cancer screening, and Honevo by HoneyLab, which picked up the Discovering Gold for creating a treatment for acne, nappy rash and rosacea from Kanuka superhoney.

The company plans to capitalise on the new market of “Pharmanaturals”.

Also honoured last night in The Dominion Post's 2014 Tribute to a Wellington Icon was Sir Peter Jackson, the movie titan behind the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.

In presenting Jackson's award to his representative, Matt Dravitzki, central region general manager Gerard Watt outlined the producer's humble beginnings as one of the last apprentice engravers at The Evening Post. Jackson's early splatter movies – Bad Taste, Braindead, and Meet the Feebles – also had a link with The Evening Post , whose staff were often roped in as extras.

The Dominion Post-sponsored Gold Awards were held in front of an audience of more than 850 at the TSB Bank Arena.

was a guest of the organisers at the awards last night. Was amused to be at the Chow Brothers table 🙂

But it was great to see so many superb Wellington companies and organisations competing and winning. Wellington may indeed be losing some corporate head offices to , but the variety of small to medium sized innovative entities we have is amazing.

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