ALA LabFusion springs from ISLAR ashes
replaced in 2004 by a new Association of Laboratory Automation
conference called LabFusion.
The Association for Laboratory Automation has unveiled a new conference, ALA LabFusion, to take place 12-16 June 2004 in Boston, Massachusetts.
The meeting will replace the International Symposium on Laboratory Automation and Robotics, which will take place for the last time on 19-22 October. ISLAR was sponsored by Zymark, which will now become the main backer of ALA LabFusion.Kevin Hrusovsky, Zymark's chief executive, said: "After 21 years of unprecedented success with ISLAR, we welcome this natural transition to the ALA."
ALA currently produces a West Coast conference, LabAutomation, held annually in February in San Jose, California, but the organisation stresses LabFusion is not merely an East coast version.
"Geographically, early stage lead discovery and life sciences tool kit companies cluster in the West while larger vertically integrated pharmaceutical companies focus their research centres in Eastern states such as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland and Massachusetts, or in the Research Triangle in North Carolina," said the ALA. The programs of LabAutomation in the West and ALA LabFusion in the East will be tailored to the interest of each region.
Two themes will dominate the Boston programme. The first is automation, instrumentation and miniaturisation technologies applied in the areas of pharmaceutics, pharmacokinetics and dynamics, pharmaceutical profiling, automated and process chemistry. The second emphasises the business of partnership development, technology acquisitions and licensing.
The organisers are promising at least one session on protein arrays, a new area of research that could lead to much more rapid drug discovery.
