ESACT 2022 conference brought over one thousand Animal Cell Technology specialists to Lisbon

News
July 7, 2022

The 27th Conference of the European Society for Animal Cell Technologies (ESACT 2022) was held in Lisbon from 24 to 29 June at the Lisbon Congress Center. Under the motto “Advanced Cell Technologies: Making Protein, Cell and Gene Therapies a Reality”, for four days the ESACT2022 conference placed Lisbon in the center of the scientific world where international experts discussed the advancement of technologies for the development of biologicals, gene and cell therapies, and vaccines.

The iBET team of more than 50 delegates, volunteers and organizers who attended ESACT 2022 Conference in Lisbon.

The conference was chaired by iBET’s CEO Paula Alves, who was closely supported by an international scientific and organizing committee. Antonio Roldão, head of Cell-Based Vaccine Development at iBET, was Paula’s main partner in the local organizing committee, which was classified as having done an “excellent organizational work” by their ESACT peers. In addition to all the scientific sessions and exhibitor events, ESACT 2022 showcased some of Portugal's treasures by offering workshops about Port Wine and guided tours to the Belém Area in Lisbon to all participants. The conference was closed with a dinner and party at Convento do Beato, an iconic venue of our capital.

Paula Alves with António Roldão, her main partner in the local organizing team of ESACT 2022.

Besides, iBET was on the spotlight at ESACT 2022 conference with the following Facts & Figures:

• Pre-Conference Workshops: Manuel Carrondo co-organized with Barry Buckland (UCL & BiologicB) and Carlos Guzman (HZI) a workshop on “Effective partnerships between Industry, Government, and Academia on Bioprocess Development” attended by over 100 people. António Roldão co-organized with Colin Clarke (NIBRT) a workshop on "Single-Cell Omics". Sofia Carvalho was a speaker in the ACTIP Workshop on "Analytical strategies for improved product characterization and process understanding" and spoke about "Bioanalytical tools for characterization of process samples of a rotavirus vaccine".

• iBET was present in the scientific programme with 3 oral presentations (Antonio Roldão, Catarina Gomes, Mariana Ferreira), 2 flash presentations (José Escandell and Rodrigo Nogueira) and four poster highlight flash talks (Joana Almeida, Maria João Sebastião, Rita Fernandes and Nikolaus Virgolini) covering the topics of vaccine development, 3D cell models of innate immunity in the central nervous system, challenges in AAV production and downstream processing, antibody production using CHO cells and generation of hepatocyte-like cells from hiPSCs.

iBET speakers at ESACT 2022 conference. From top left to bottom right: José Escandell, António Roldão, Catarina Gomes, Rodrigo Nogueira, Mariana Ferreira and Nikolaus Virgolini.

• iBET won the first (Joana Almeida) and third (Maria João Sebastião) poster awards of the conference from a total of more than 35 poster presentations by iBET delegates, of which several were classified in the TOP100.

ESACT 2022 Conference Poster Awardees.

ESACT 2022 in numbers:

  • 1013 participants from 34 countries
  • 4 Keynote speakers & ESACT Innovation Award Lecture
  • 11 invited speakers
  • 26 oral + 17 flash presentations
  • 330 posters
  • 62 Companies/Exhibitors
  • 57 Grants to students and early career scientists

The 28th ESACT conference will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, in June 2024, and chaired by Alan Dickson from University of Manchester.

ESACT 2022 wrap up by Paula Alves and closing dinner at Convento do Beato in Lisbon.