Innovative Tissue-Based Diagnostics: Decoding Cancer & Other Maladies, Philadelphia, June 4-5, 2012The goal of the conference is to enhance knowledge and experience exchange among industry and research pathologists as well as other researchers working with human tissue.
Five years from now, will sequencing centers have enough capacity to meet global demand?
February 1, 2012
Kevin Davies : At long last, the agenda for the 2012 Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) conference in Marco Island, Florida, has been posted.
Later this month, about 800 genome scientists from academia and industry, along with a cadre of over-dressed financial types, will discuss progress in genome sequencing science, platforms, and software over four days of sessions and after-hours parties.
Originally created a decade ago as an antidote to the increasingly crowded and commercialized GSAC (Genome Sequencing and Analysis Conference), created by Craig Venter, AGBT struggled in the years following 9/11, and the meeting’s academic organizers will admit that its survival owed much to steadfast support from Applied Biosystems.
Once the NGS revolution took hold in 2006, however, the meeting never looked back. It has become the premier meeting spot for the genomics/NGS crowd, cleverly allowing the major vendors opportunities to showcase their latest gadgets without overshadowing the science. Attendance is strictly limited, which makes those places increasingly coveted. And the beachfront venue doesn’t hurt either.
(Ironically, Life Technologies, which recently unveiled the Ion Proton sequencer at the Consumer Electronics Show, is not among the sponsors AGBT this year. Pacific Biosciences is the 2012 meeting’s gold sponsor, though there is sensibly no listing of the firm’s traditional fireworks display, an indulgence that wouldn’t jive with the company’s enforced decision to lay off 130 workers six months ago.)
The three keynote speakers are Lynn Jorde (U. Utah), Rick Myers (Hudson Alpha Institute) and Michel Georges (U. Liege). A notable change is that the final session is now devoted to genome biology, shifting the frequently headline-grabbing new technology presentations to earlier in the program.