On May 26th, the 15th BELACT meeting will be held in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. The BELgium group for Animal Cell Technology (BELACT) was founded in 1992 and has a long affiliated history with the ESACT society. BELACT seeks at bridging together the scientists from academia and from industry in Belgium, and also from neighboring countries such as France and Luxembourg. Belgium is known to be a place with many pharma/biotech companies (to name a few: Genzyme/Sanofi, UCB, GSK Vaccines, and numerous innovative small-scale companies) and many renowned universities that are performing cutting edge research in cell biology and biotechnology.
This year, the BELACT meeting will be entitled New Technologies for Animal Cell Culture. As major technology shifts have occurred in the last decades, we see that, while cell monitoring and analysis has been traditionally performed at a bulk population level, novel strategies and tools for harnessing cellular heterogeneities at the single cell level have been developed towards a better understanding of bioprocesses. In addition, while the development of 3D cultures has emerged as a major breakthrough in biological sciences, the time-resolved regulation and monitoring of cells is considered as the 4th dimension playing important role in the regulation of cell physiology. Moreover, it is becoming clearer that a better understanding and control of the hydrodynamics in bioreactor modulates mecano-transduction and mass transfer regulating the quality of stem cell derived products. As these new technologies advance, they will have important implications in recombinant protein production, drug screening or tissue engineering. These advances will be discussed, among others topics, by leading scientists form major French and Belgian universities and companies working in the field. To mention a few, Stefaan De Smedt (UGhent) will give a keynote about the use of nanotechnology for the delivery of nucleic acids. Franck Delvigne (ULg) will talk about dynamic single cell analysis for bioprocess control. The last session of the meeting will be dedicated to the translation of single cell technologies into new business models: keynotes will be given by Jose Castillo, CTO of Univercells, and by Denis Dufrane, CSO of Novadip. More information about the meeting can be obtained by sending an email to the official email address: belact2016@gmail.com.
Please note – This is not a Euroscicon event
