THE GOLDEN AGE OF DIRECTED EVOLUTION OF ENZYMES. Directed enzyme evolution is leaving a golden age. The consolidation of robust mutant library creation methods and the arise of reliable high-throughput screening assays have allowed scientists all over the world to generate synthetic proteins with functionalities that surpass by far those of natural counterparts. Importantly, he nascent association between Rosetta design and phylogenetic inference methods is assisting directed evolution enterprises. Along these lines, the use of paleoenzymology -ancestral sequence reconstruction and resurrection- aims at opening unexplored avenues for the laboratory evolution of more promiscuous and stable ancestral enzymes. In this lecture, I will discuss all these advances in this fascinating ground of research commenting several case studies from our work on peroxygenase and laccase engineering for the pharma, chemical and environmental sectors.

Bionomous - the world's first provider of AI-powered solutions for screening, sorting and dispensing of small biological entities. We are an innovative, agile and conscious team of biologists and engineers working to provide you with an easy-to-use and customizable solution to free up valuable time and increase efficiency.
Our patented technology was originally created to enable the mechanical sorting of zebrafish eggs. Now, we have adapted this technology to other small biological entities, such as Xenopus laevis oocytes and embryos, killifish and medaka eggs and even flower seeds.
Come to our talk and discover how our technology can give you better results and more peace of mind!

Revvity Solution Spotlight presentation

Legacy lab automation promises to free up your time so you can focus on your science, but often has the opposite effect of restricting and limiting you. There’s a steep learning curve, high upfront and ongoing costs, and the need to redesign workflows around systems. What if there was a way to put you and your science back at the center of your automation? At Opentrons, we believe there’s a way to help scientists scale their science without having to make huge investments of time and money.
Join us for this Solutions Spotlight session to learn about something new from Opentrons that is everything today’s lab automation systems are not. It’s flexible — adapting to your protocol. It’s versatile — fitting into any project or workflow your science needs. It’s liberating — releasing scientists from automation systems that overburden their time, reduce their throughput, and limit the scope of their programs.

In this spotlight presentation, Mike Helme will give an overview of Cell Line Development (CLD) and its current therapeutics focus. He then moves on to the current challenges faced by many biopharma groups in the CLD market. After introducing the UP.SIGHT™, a multifaceted CLD device, he will explain how this platform addresses many of the challenges with its simple user-friendly interface offering the highest level of single-cell assurance. Some very positive data from an industrial partner with the UP.SIGHT™ will be introduced as well. Finally, Mike Helme will discuss how the CLD workflow has been automated within the C.STATION™ platform.

In this presentation, we will explore how bioprinting technologies address key challenges within drug discovery and drug screening. Bioprinting enables the creation of complex, heterogeneous structures that better mimic in vivo tissue. By precisely controlling the placement and composition of different cell types, scientists can create 3D biomimetic models with more realistic cell-cell interactions, gradients, and microenvironments. Standardized workflows can be developed, reducing time-consuming and repetitive tasks, and enabling more consistent data gathering.
Join us to learn about the exciting potential of bioprinting technology in advancing disease modeling and drug discovery.

Revvity Solution Spotlight presentation

The EU Open Screen Data Mining Competition Results

We are witnessing an exponential increase in the availability of biomedical data and published research findings. Despite this vast and expanding collective dataset, human diseases remain a significant unsolved problem due to limitations in how we translate basic research into effective treatments.

BenevolentAI has built a Knowledge Graph that integrates large quantities of diverse and independent biomedical data sources - including over 35 million scientific papers, terabytes of genetics and genomics data and the contents of dozens of structured databases - to capture a detailed mechanistic representation of the dysregulated processes that underlie human disease. The Knowledge Graph can be explored or modelled using machine learning tools to uncover novel disease targets. In this talk, Gabriel Rosser will detail the AI-driven process at BenevolentAI to identify therapeutic targets and uncover more effective disease-modifying treatments.

In the recent decade, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy has revolutionized strategies for cancer treatments due to its highly effective clinical efficacy and response for B cell malignancies. Currently, there are six CAR-T cell products available in the market including Kymriah, Yescarta, Tecartus, Breyanzi, Abecma, and Carvykt. The success of CAR-T cell therapy has stimulated the increase in the research and development of various CAR constructs to target different tumor types. Therefore, a robust and efficient in vitro potency assay is needed to quickly identify potential CAR gene design from a library of construct candidates. In the first part of this work we will expose the drawbacks of the the numerous traditional in vitro CAR-T cell-mediated cytotoxicity assays and demonstrate why image cytometry methodologies have been utilized for various CAR-T cell-mediated cytotoxicity assay using different fluorescent labeling methods, mainly due to their ease-of-use, ability to capture cell images for verification, and higher throughput performance.
The success of CART has been limited to hematological blood born cancers and the transition into solid tumors has not been as effective as hoped. Immune cell trafficking and immunosuppressive factors within the tumor microenvironment are but two methods that increase the relative difficulty in developing a robust CAR-T cell therapy against solid tumors. In the second part of this work we will highlight why , with the development of 3D spheroid models, image cytometry may provide the necessary tools and applications for CAR T cell therapy discovery geared towards solid tumors.