Curiosity Ignites Anticipation for SLAS2025!
December 2, 2024
Curiosity Ignites Anticipation for SLAS2025!
December 2, 2024
Find it all under one roof – 150 speakers, eight life sciences educational tracks, new features, events and a host of colleagues. The SLAS International Exhibition and Conference, to be held January 25 - 29, 2025 (San Diego, CA, USA), offers all the inspiration curious minds need to launch the new year. Read what others expect and make a wish list of your own!
What aspect of SLAS2025 do you anticipate most?
“What brings me back to SLAS year after year is the Ignite competition, where start-up companies showcase their brand-new products and vie for the spotlight,” says SLAS2025 Program Co-chair Meiye Wu, Ph.D., director, consumables manufacturing at 10x Genomics, (Pleasanton, CA, USA).
“Over the last 10 years, SLAS has built up an ecosystem where startups get opportunities to network, gather international exposure and enjoy feedback from a large audience of potential customers. The finalists for the Ignite Award competition are given their own kiosks, and ‘pitch’ their company and product in a presentation held in the Ignite theatre in front of a broader audience. The competition is getting fiercer every year – a must-see for anyone interested in trying their hand in entrepreneurship, as well as learning about the newest and greatest in automation technology."
SLAS2025 Keynote Speaker Jesse Boehm, Ph.D., is looking forward to sharing thoughts with those who attend his presentation. “A second chapter in the revolution of molecularly driven cancer medicine is unfolding,” says Boehm, who is chief science officer of Break Through Cancer, (Cambridge, MA, USA), a novel foundation dedicated to urgently reimagining how cancer will be cured by harnessing partnerships. Boehm also leads a research group at MIT’s Koch Institute, which is focused on bringing the power of functional genomics to bear on living samples from cancer patients with particular emphasis on rare and underrepresented tumors.
“Through the use of new functional and single-cell technologies, we are beginning to go beyond static predictions towards one in which dynamic, perturbation-based assessments of drug sensitivities will soon become possible,” he continues. “My SLAS2025 keynote presentation will describe how the efforts of the last decade and current efforts underway are helping to propel a future of precision functional genomics that stands to benefit patients with both common and rare tumors.”
“The SLAS International Conference is one of my favorite weeks of the year!” comments Zack Gurard-Levin, Ph.D., science director, discovery for Charles River, (Chicago, IL, USA), a member of the SLAS Board of Directors and a 2025 SLAS Fellow Member inductee.
“SLAS is the place to meet and exchange ideas with an incredible, enthusiastic and diverse global community to drive innovation in lab automation and drug discovery. With so much to see, hear and learn, it is challenging to pick only a few highlights!” he continues.
“This year, I am particularly excited to visit Innovation AveNEW and the NexusXp interactive pavilion. Innovation AveNEW has a special place in my heart given that my company, SAMDI Tech, Inc. (acquired by Charles River in 2023), first exhibited on Innovation AveNEW in 2013. I always enjoy hearing the pitches from our entrepreneurial community about their novel solutions to the most difficult challenges in biology, drug discovery and automation, and how they aim to translate their science into a compelling story. It generates significant hope and enthusiasm for the future of our field.
“Speaking of labs of the future, the new NexusXp pavilion is sure to captivate a wide audience in San Diego,” continues Gurard-Levin, who said he already nabbed his ticket for the pavilion with his SLAS member-discount registration to SLAS2025. “With its focus on the Design-Make-Test-Analyze (DMTA) cycle, the pavilion will offer an interactive experience with technology providers who are accelerating this key phase of the drug discovery pipeline that ultimately benefits the patients. I’m looking forward to participating and learning within this new platform.
“And of course, I am excited to see my colleagues and friends, celebrate our community's accomplishments and strive for even greater success in 2025. The countdown is on!”
“The biggest focus for me at any SLAS International Conference and Exhibition is finding out who has solved the same problem I'm dealing with – and that requires talking to people,” says David K. Jennions, Ph.D., senior director of R&D Systems for GRAIL, USA (Menlo Park, CA, USA), and also a member of the SLAS Board of Directors and an SLAS Fellow Member. “Vendors, SLAS staff and other folks generally hanging around are almost universally willing to chat about application and implementation, such that known solutions can be shared.
“And that applies even more so for newer and early-career attendees – this is the place to discover how the work you're doing (or might want to do) fits in with so many different contexts, and how you may leverage the potential of what you learn. If you haven't spotted it yet, the SLAS Mentor Match program has been designed to help you find your way. SLAS members, who are further along in their careers, volunteer to discuss, plan and guide you through this fascinating (if occasionally overwhelming) conference.”
“I am looking forward to poster and podium presentations on biomarkers, assay development and screening applications. I also want to get to know the latest equipment that can be leveraged for cell-based assays for target validation and early drug discovery,” says Kalyani Gampa, M.Sc., principal scientist II at Novartis BioMedical Research (Cambridge, MA, USA). Gampa is co-chair of the SLAS2025 Screening Applications and Biomarker Diagnostics educational track, along with Kim Dorans, B.Sc., director strategy and corporate development at VedaBio, (San Diego, CA, USA).
“I have been in this industry for more than 20 years and there’s nothing quite like SLAS,” says Paul Anderson, M.Sc., engineer at Neurocrine Biosciences, (San Diego, CA, USA), and a 2025 SLAS Fellow Member inductee. “Every year I look forward to running into former colleagues, meeting with exhibitors to hear about new products, and learning how other teams are approaching challenges, especially through the podium and poster presentations.
“I am particularly excited about the speakers we have lined up for the Automation Technologies educational track at SLAS2025,” continues Anderson, who serves as the track's co-chair along with Carleen Klumpp-Thomas, M.Sc., director of automation for the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, (NCATS; Rockville, MD, USA). “There are some great examples of innovation across the automation spectrum – from novel labware, to instruments, all the way to clever integrated systems to support higher-throughput experiments using physiologically-relevant models. We have seen some eye-catching mobile robots and other labware transport technologies in the SLAS exhibition hall the last couple years, so I am looking forward to hearing from speakers how they have been implemented and how the early adopters see this space evolving.”
SLAS Travel Award Winner Jing Ke, Ph.D., associate principal scientist at Merck, (South San Francisco, CA, USA), is also eagerly anticipating SLAS2025. The travel award is presented to students, graduate students, post-doc researchers, junior faculty members, and professionals who have completed undergraduate and/or graduate school and are within the first five years of their career. The award covers conference registration, airfare and hotel accommodations to present work at SLAS2025.
At the upcoming event, Ke will present “Streamline and Accelerate Drug Discovery by the Third Generation of Lab Automation: Orchestrated Lab Robotics on a Sea of Data,” at the podium, and also a poster, “A Novel, Fully Automated Solution for High-Throughput Antibody Purification Using Magnetic Platform for Both Small- and Mid-Scale.”
“As I prepare for SLAS2025, I am filled with anticipation for the incredible opportunities of sharing our effort, learning from industry leaders, and networking with like-minded peers on advancements in lab automation and its application in drug discovery,” Ke comments. “I truly believe this will be an enriching experience, and I look forward to an inspiring and transformative event!”