Boston Technology

The city of Boston is back on its feet after the horrific events that unfolded last April. One such example is the World Biotechnology Congress 2013 which was held at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston June 3-6, 2013. The meeting was held in parallel with Drug Discovery and Therapy World Congress 2013 and the two meetings shared plenary speakers at the beginning of each day's sessions.  All in all approximately 900 researchers from around the world convened to talk about their research and to share information. At the end of the plenary sessions the two meetings adjourned to their respective meeting rooms, where the World Biotechnology Congress further broke into three separate tracks, Plant and Environment, Medical Biotechnology, and Regenerative Medicine. There were 150 oral presentations as well as 125 poster presentations over the four day period.



Boston Harbor at dusk.

The meeting opened with presentations by Antonio Gotto, who spoke about Hypolipidemic drugs and Allan Goldstein, who discussed the clinical use of synthetic thymosin bioactive peptides. The second day's plenary lectures included a presentation by Rudolf Jaenisch on the state of Stem Cell Research including the issues; and by Richard Atkinson on the role of Adenovirus 36 and its role in the world wide epidemic of obesity. 

While there were not any supporting exhibitor displays at the meeting, BioTek did present a lecture entitled "Quantitation of Algal Cell Growth and Neutral Lipid Production in Microplates" in the Plant and Environment track.  Besides algal species work, a great deal of information regarding optimal algae production facilities was provided.  Heavy metal remediation using plants was discussed. Besides biofuel and waste water remediation, the information on the use of unicellular algae as bioassays for environmental monitoring and novel antimicrobial use of plant extracts was also provided.

Unfortunately in scientific meetings with parallel presentation tracks one cannot get to attend everything. I concentrated on the Plant and Environment track of the meeting, but would love to have been able to attend some of the other tracks such as Medical Biotechnology or Regenerative Medicine. So much information, so little time...

By: BioTek Instruments, Paul Held PhD, Laboratory Manager