Molecular Diagnostics World Congress – San Francisco

The Molecular Diagnostics World Congress was one thread of a 4 thread conference run by SelectBiosciences  the other strands were the Microarray World Congress, Lab-on-a chip World Congress & the Single Cell Analysis Summit.

The location of the meeting was the South San Francisco Conference Centre and the venue provided to be very good with excellent coffee and meals provided during those vital breaks where all the real thinking and science gets done. The layout was very good and the conference organisers had done a good job of integrating exhibitors with delegates whilst managing to accomodate a large number of poster boards presenting some interesting science.

We met a variety of people from all scientific fields as the attendees from all the threads met and mingled in the exhibition hall. Scientists had come from all over the world for this meeting and we had the opportunity to discuss the Rugby World Cup (and a bit of peptide chemistry!) with scientists from Australia and New Zealand. Scientists were present from all areas of the scientific community; academia, traditional big pharma, biotech and diagnostics companies were all represented and this mix made for some varied and interesting presentations and discussions.

The big area of discussion for us seemed to be the use of polyclonal or monoclonal antibodies within flow diagnostics and lab-on-a-chip applications i.e. capture antibodies within chip based screening or cell sorting type devices. This is an interesting and constantly developing area and it seems that as with all areas in science the interface between Physics and Biology is producing some good collaborations, research and products. This is of course,  very tied into the field of personalised medicine, which is a current buzzword and area of great interest for the healthcare community.

From our perspective this was a very valuable meeting and we had interest in custom peptides, custom antibodies, fluorescent labelling and PNA (Peptide Nucleic Acids) so we were kept busy answering questions; some easy and some a little more challenging which is appreciated as for those of us who left the lab some time ago it is nice to get into some real science.

It would be nice to attend this meeting next year, we will certainly be considering it and we look forward to meeting many more of you at future meetings.

The American Peptide Symposium 2011

This year the 22^nd edition of the very popular APS annual symposium took place from the 24th-30th June in sunny San Diego at the Sheraton Hotel and Marina on Harbor Island. San Diego definitely deserves its title of America’s Finest City: There is a lot to see and do, from Sea World to the beautiful Balboa Park and the zoo, Old Town and Little Italy, downtown to the Gaslamp and finally the Seaport and Coronado Island… Back to the peptide world, the theme of the symposium was “Building Bridges” (not disulphides, bridges between disciplines) to symbolize the role of peptide science in an increasing number of disciplines. Now the figures, 73 lectures to find out about the latest applications of peptides in material science, bioconjugation, therapeutics, cancer… 62 exhibitors split between the Pavilion and the Nautilus where the posters (430 According to the programme!) were also displayed.

What we liked:

• The friendly atmosphere: the peptide world is a small world and the APS meeting is a fantastic opportunity to network and catch up with friends
• The quality of the speakers (some very distinguished)
•  Jennifer Ottesen’s² synthesis of acetylated Histone H3 using a Dawson Dbz resin with alloc protecting groups (to avoid the nasty peptide branching)
•  A lot of Click chemistry
•  Jean Chmielewski’s³ functionalised collagen to produce spheres, discs or fibers
•  Christian Becker’s⁴ optimised synthesis of a protein with 3 transmembrane domains.
•  San Diego

What we didn’t like:

•  The packed lunches! Nothing memorable…
•   The tent, so far from the lecture hall.

Useful links:

¹ Ashaf Brik’s lab at Ben Gurion University
² Jennifer Ottesen’s lab at Ohio State University
³ Jean Chmielewski’s lab at Purdue University
⁴ Christian Becker – Center for Integrated Protein Science Munich 

American Diabetes Association 71st Scientific Sessions

After many suggestions from our clients that we should attend; CRB finally exhibited at the American Diabetes Association annual meeting for the first time from June 24^th to the 28^th in the beautiful city of San Diego.

This meeting brought together over 17,500 people from all walks of life with an interest in Diabetes from research through diagnostics and medical to patients so there was an interesting mix of people browsing the exhibition and some interesting sights to see. All of us at CRB joined in the fray and took advantage of the free haemoglobin A1C tests being provided by suppliers such as Biorad and Novo Nordisk. A1C is a biomarker of interest in determining if a person is pre-diabetic or diabetic. I am pleased to say that none of us were surprised with a positive for diabetes result but it did illustrate the growing importance of biomarkers and personalised medicine. Increasingly we find that our custom antibody customers are working within the field of  biomarker discovery and within the diagnostics field so it was a good venue for us to see what this all leads to in the “real” world. Traditionally our customers have been focussing on using our peptides and antibodies for investigating biological systems to identify lead targets for drug discovery but now they also are interested in  monitoring biomarkers so that the developed treatments can be used on the appropriate patients. It is a fascinating area and seems to bring the researchers closer to the patient.

The meeting was held in the the San Diego Convention Center, this center is huge and the exhibition was well run as they specialise in big meetings such as this. The center is right next to downtown San Diego which was very convenient for conference attendees. The city itself is very pleasant and judging by the amount of people around the city with conference badges everyone was enjoying their visit both to the conference and also to the city.

We did suffer from the “June Gloom” which is a coastal fog which blocks the sun in San Diego at this time of year but when the Sun did break through it was very pleasant. Apparently June is renowned as the month of the year not to visit San Diego but we were there for the science and not the sun. Our head chemist Dr Laurent Caron was also in the city at the same time attending the American Peptide Society annual meeting and stayed on for a few days after the conference and apparently it cleared up and was beautifully sunny as soon as the sales team left!

We had interest in custom peptides and antibodies at this meeting so it seems that our services are required within this area of the research world so thanks to those people who suggested we attend.

The meeting next year will be held in Philadelphia from June 8th-12^th.

The Peptide Conference 2011

This year, the Peptide Conference 2011 organised by Avakado media was taking place at Chilford Hall Vineyard and Conference Centre in Linton, Cambridge (UK). The event attracted a lot of sponsors but delegates still had to pay a steep 895 Euros to have the privilege to attend. As expected, the attendance was on the low side. After picking up a hire car at Cambridge Station, I drove to Linton which was fairly easy to locate but could not find the Vineyard (my satnav was suggesting strange things and I ignored it!). After enjoying the countryside for some time, I decided to ask a local and finally arrived at the venue. The conference was taking place in a barn, which was slightly strange but a pleasant change.

The first session entitled Peptide Structure and Drug Discovery was a succession of talks from various peptide companies. Sadly, the attention was not always in the detail and some presentations lacked depth. Thankfully, Don Wellings saved the day with some interesting ideas.

Don is a regular speaker at peptide meetings. He is interested in developing cheap technologies for peptide synthesis and is trying to raise interest in his glass beads technology. The idea is to use cheap jewellery beads made on ton scale and coat them with a resin for peptide synthesis.  Another idea is to polymerise oligolysines (made by bacterial fermentation for use as food preservatives) using various cross-linkers.

The second session (Peptide Therapeutics) mainly involved institutional and academic speakers. Mike Gait (Medical Research Council), a world expert in the synthesis of analogues of DNA/RNA such as Peptide Nucleic Acids (PNAs) and Peptide Morpholinos (PMOs) presented some work on the conjugation of analogues to Cell Penetrating Peptides (CPPs). Mike is a very engaging speaker and his presentations are always full of good content. Later, Prof. Rob Lizkamp (Utrecht University) described some dendrimer constructs and some discontinuous epitopes mimicry using his scaffolds. The paper is available online (free of charge!) if you are interested in the triazacyclophane (TAC) scaffold.

Mixed feelings at the end of conference, some good and some bad…

BioTrinity Conference

CRB recently attended OBN’s (Oxfordshire Bioscience Network) BioTrinity conference in Newbury, UK on the 12-14^th April. The BioTrinity Biopartnering and Investment conference is in its fifth year and CRB had not attended since the first meeting so it was a good opportunity to see how far this event has come.

According to OBN around 750 people attended the meeting and it certainly seemed to be busy and vibrant which was good to see. CRB had an exhibition stand at the meeting and took part in the partnering meetings to establish some new business relationships and meet with old acquaintances.

This meeting was very much focussed on investment and the seminars and partnering event reflected this so this was perhaps a bit of an unusual meeting for us but it was encouraging that we still met with actual scientists with an interest in real lab work and peptides. Companies represented at the meeting ranged from traditional big pharma down to 1-man virtual biotech companies so it covered the whole breadth of the industry.

The meeting was potentially more useful from a business development perspective as we are currently seeking new partnerships and looking for interesting technologies. The partnering system was extremely well run and plenty of time was allocated for good conversations to occur to facilitate this. If you have anything you think we might be interested in please do feel free to contact us.

On a lighter note as the event was set at Newbury racecourse we had a better view than most conferences when walking to the partnering hall. However this did give good views of the golfers in the middle of the course having fun whilst the conference attendees were hard at work!

It is of course always enjoyable being away from headquarters and meeting with our customers, suppliers and potential future collaborators. We hope to see many more of you throughout the year.

Iain