First European Lab Automation Conference Convenes in Hamburg

The first European Lab Automation (ELA) conference and exhibition took place at the Congress Center Hamburg (CCH; Germany) from June 30–July 1, 2011. The congress consisted of ten distinct tracks each addressing a specific application area, but with an underlying theme of automating the technique, equipment, or associated informatics.

With 1,523 attendees and 151 exhibitors and media partners, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. The combination of ten comprehensive conference tracks and workshops provided useful and relevant scientific content across a range of applications within laboratory automation.

Of particular interest was the world biobanking summit, which included blood banking; standardization; harmonization; bioethics and regulations for global biobanking; and field cancer biobanking. The keynote speakers were Mary-Beth Fisk, vice president of the Texas Blood and Tissue Bank (San Antonio, TX, USA) and Prof. Malcolm Mason from Cardiff University (Wales, United Kingdom).

Mary-Beth Fisk reviewed methods for umbilical cord blood processing/cell isolation, defined technologies for cryoprotection, freezing, and storage of cells. She talked about cord blood-collection modes and outlined current statistical data related to transplantation and other clinical uses for cord blood in regenerative medicine.

Prof. Mason discussed the future of biobanking for cancer. He discussed the balance between accumulating large numbers of samples with good clinical annotation, in the light of encouraging the scientific community to use what is already available.

Some of the vendors who expressed their satisfaction with the conference exhibition included Venomtech (Ramsgate, United Kingdom), TAP Biosystems (Royston, United Kingdom), Thermo Fisher Scientific (Palm Springs, CA, USA), and KBiosystems (Basildon, United Kingdom).

Ken Browne, event organizer and director of Select Biosciences (Sudbury, UK) commented, “We are delighted with the success of the first ELA conference and exhibition and have received some fantastic feedback from vendors and delegates alike.” He continued, “We are aiming to fill the need for a pan-European Automation event, and establish ELA as the forum for combining scientific content with up-to-date technology. As such, we have already booked the date for the second ELA conference and hope to continue its success.” The venue in Hamburg is being booked for next year and the event is scheduled for May 30-31, 2012.

Related Links:
European Lab Automation