Insights from ELRIG UK Drug Discovery 2024
30th October 2024
By Ashley Hayes, Account Executive.
The current landscape of drug discovery is extremely exciting. Emerging technologies and approaches promise to overcome challenges currently holding drug developers back. These advances promise a brighter future in healthcare, aiding the identification of novel, safe and effective drugs at a faster rate than ever before.
With the progress being made in the field, ELRIG UK Drug Discovery conferences are a firm favourite of ours. The events are hailed as Europe’s largest conferences for the drug discovery community, and it’s safe to say the most recent conference held up to this claim.
Drug Discovery 2024 was the biggest ELRIG event so far, with over 3000 delegates, 328 posters, 181 talks, and 160 exhibitors. Throughout both days, booths, auditoriums, and networking zones were filled with people talking about the latest advances and sharing ideas. Every seat was filled in most of the talks we attended, which is a testament to the great turnout and list of speakers.
Highlights from the ELRIG Breakthrough Zone
A special highlight of the event for us was the ELRIG Breakthrough Zone. This was an area of the exhibition hall designed to showcase innovative start-up companies, with booths and flash presentations from companies including:
• Oria Bioscience – Supplier of intact, living organelle batches, enabling high-quality, high-throughput organelle-based hit screening.
• A4cell – Lab-in-a-cell devices that are based on SPAchip® technology. These are intracellular silicon microchips that can monitor cellular pathways in real-time.
• NexMR – Benchtop NMR instrument that enhances the speed and sensitivity of hit discovery and characterisation.
• ORYL Photonics – Light scattering instrument for rapid and sensitive solubility testing.
• Splashlake – Provider of scalable, integrative scientific data management and connectivity tools.
• Semarion – Unique microcarrier platform that revolutionises the speed and quality of adherent cell screening.
• Abselion – Amperia benchtop system that quantifies antibodies, AAVs and other proteins directly from crude samples in as little as 1 minute per sample.
• Magnitude Biosciences – CRO with expertise in designing customised C. elegans studies to address specific ageing questions, and integrating C. elegans into drug discovery pipelines.
Reflections on the industry
The event showcased how organisations of all sizes are driving innovation in drug discovery. However, after speaking with many exhibitors, it seems as though it’s been a difficult year across the life sciences sector.
Yet, things might just be on the up. The event brought many positive discussions on how things may turn a corner in 2025, as Q1 budgets are currently being planned. There is optimism throughout the industry, and the record-breaking turnout at the most recent ELRIG UK Drug Discovery show is hopefully a sign of brighter things to come.
At Alto, our passion is to communicate innovations in the life science industry. We use our combined scientific and marketing expertise to help companies raise awareness of their groundbreaking advances and generate leads.
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