CIA 2009 overview
Posted: 20 March 2009 | EPR | No comments yet
On the cold and snowy weekend of the 7th and 8th of February a group of academics, professionals and vendors met in Dublin for the first Cellular Imaging and Analysis event co-hosted by Trinity College Dublin and the European Pharmaceutical Review. Battling through the adverse weather conditions, delegates and speakers came from faraway places such as North Carolina and Goettingen and nearer corners of the British Isles such as Edinburgh and London.
On the cold and snowy weekend of the 7th and 8th of February a group of academics, professionals and vendors met in Dublin for the first Cellular Imaging and Analysis event co-hosted by Trinity College Dublin and the European Pharmaceutical Review. Battling through the adverse weather conditions, delegates and speakers came from faraway places such as North Carolina and Goettingen and nearer corners of the British Isles such as Edinburgh and London.
On the cold and snowy weekend of the 7th and 8th of February a group of academics, professionals and vendors met in Dublin for the first Cellular Imaging and Analysis event co-hosted by Trinity College Dublin and the European Pharmaceutical Review. Battling through the adverse weather conditions, delegates and speakers came from faraway places such as North Carolina and Goettingen and nearer corners of the British Isles such as Edinburgh and London.
Guided by the conference Chairman, Dr Anthony Davies, the Director of the High Content Research Facility at Trinity College Dublin, and after a warm and insightful keynote speech from Professor Yuri Volkov, Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine, and Dr Aideen Long, a Senior Lecturer at UCD, day ones talks began.
Before lunch Dr Edward Ainscow, a Research Scientist from Astra Zeneca, outlined examples of how they hope to extend the applicability of automated image acquisition and analysis into complicated biological systems and in ex vivo pathology. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Institute of Molecular Medicine labyrinth Jeremy Simpson, Professor of Cell Biology at UCD spoke of RNAi and the High Content Screening of cellular pathways.
During lunch, over sandwiches and coffees, there was a lively mix of friendly vendors intermingling with academics which made way for an informative yet relaxed afternoon.
Reconvening, Dr Oscar Joseph Trask the Head of Cellular Imaging Technologies at the Centre for Drug Discovery and Associate in Research in the Department of Neurobiology at Duke University, took us through the challenges and successes surrounding their research into neurodegenerative diseases, such as Huntingdon’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease. This included information on dealing with assay development, validation and the promise of compound screening in various models.
One of the concluding talks of day one was given by Professor Peter Ghazal who is the Head of the Division of Pathway Medicine and a Professor of Molecular Genetics and Biomedicine at the University of Edinburgh. Peter’s presentation certainly provided our delegates with a stimulating conversation for the drinks reception as he discussed the issues raised by exchanging dynamic phenotypic data between different labs. Data sharing causes controversy not only in a cultural way but also from a computational and scientific point of view and Peter certainly highlighted the imperative need for global data standards.
The drinks reception at the end of day one proved very popular and provided an excellent platform for all our delegates and vendors to talk about the day’s presentations, business affairs and of course about what bar they should go to next…we were in Dublin after all.
Day two was dedicated to demos and tutorials from our exhibitors and sponsors. These included a Flow Cytometry and High Content Analysis workshop led by Ann Atzberger of the Institute of Molecular Medicine and a talk from Dr Rachel Errington and Nick White from Cardiff University on the best experimental practices and design in imaging and analysis. Thermo Scientific demonstrated Rapid Assay Development and a specially prepared tutorial was delivered by Mike Janes, Senior Scientist and Technology Area Manager and Kathy Free, Product Developer, both from Invitrogen.
The feedback from CIA 09 so far has been that it was a very broad and informative event that appealed to all our attendees. Even the most knowledgeable of guests were able to sit in on the talks and really gain new intelligence.
Our thanks go to all our eminent speakers and of course all of the attendees whose passion for all things pharmaceutical outshone the poor weather. The spirit and co-operation between all attendees was admirable and your kind words are truly gratifying.
Huge thanks also to the Institute of Molecular Medicine for hosting our event, to our sponsors; BD Biosciences, PerkinElmer and Thermo Scientific all of who’s presence was warmly received, to the tabletop exhibitors MDS Analytical Technologies, TTP Labtech, GE Healthcare and Invitrogen and to our media partner selectscience.net.
We look forward to seeing you all at CIA 2010.
