The 21st ESACT conference was held in the beautiful surroundings of the CityWest Hotel resort in Dublin, Ireland. For the first time in ESACT history the number of participants exceeded 900: a sign of the ever increasing importance of this area. The conference commenced on Sunday June 5th with two sets of parallel workshops on the subjects listed below. An additional workshop was held on Monday lunchtime of the conferenceProcess Analytical Technology (PAT), Quality by Design (QbD) and other recent regulatory developments.
2. Innovative media products for the 21st century biopharmaceutical industry.
3. The impact of high titre media feed-streams on monoclonal antibody purification.
4. Advances in genomics and proteomics.
5. Stem Cell Technology: new developments and clinical applications.
The 21st ESACT meeting - 'Cellular Solutions for Clinical Challenges' outlined the novel capabilities of animal cell technology to move towards the clinic. The highly successful meeting was attended by a record number of researchers and engineers interested in all aspects of animal cell technology. The meeting included sessions on Stem Cells, Tissue Engineering, Advances in Bioprocessing, Biotherapeutics, Novel Vaccines and Virology and Advances in Synthetic and Molecular Biology. The meeting was supported by an array of exceptional invited speakers from around the world whose contributions complemented the emerging technologies and the challenges facing the clinical application of animal cell culture and technologies. The proceedings here include the short papers, adding to the wealth of knowledge gained from previous ESACT meetings.