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.