The Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS) international conference (SLAS2025) kicked off in San Diego on Monday 27 January.

Keynote session

SLAS CEO and President Vicki Loise welcomed SLAS2025 attendees to the opening keynote session, sponsored by Thermo Fisher Scientific. After acknowledging and thanking those that make events such as SLAS2025 happen, she welcomed Ahmar Zaidi, Senior Medical Director at Agios Pharmaceuticals, to present his keynote address on lessons from sickle cell disease on the state of healthcare and racial disparities.

Sickle cell disease represents a microcosm of how lack of equity and compassion can influence science and care of those affected. In the talk, Dr Zaidi discussed the lessons we can learn from the sickle cell disease space to apply to other areas of healthcare.

Dr Zaidi is a paediatric haematologist who spent several years at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan, where he helped care for over 800 patients with sickle cell disease. He currently serves as Senior Medical Director of Clinical Development for Agios Pharmaceuticals. Moreover, he has served as the Chair of the Haematology Anti-Racism Task Force for the American Society of Haematology and as the Chair for the Board for the Sickle Cell Reproductive Health Directive.

Ignite Theatre

The Ignite Theatre featured three talks from DDW’s ‘Concept to Cure: Curiosity and Lab Automation in Drug Discovery’ programme track, which ran alongside SLAS Ignite Award finalist presentations.

It was standing room only for ‘Automating drug discovery with AI’ by Nicola Richmond, Chief Scientist, AI, Recursion, who is known for her work at the intersection of drug discovery and technology. Nicola discussed the industrialisation of AI and drug discovery.

In the afternoon, Raminderpal Singh, Global Head of AI & GenAI Practice 20/15 Visioneers spoke about getting large language models to reliably and cost-efficiently work. He drew upon examples of the technology being used within the life sciences industry and discussed the challenges and opportunities that LLMs represent for scientists and drug discovery.

The last talk was delivered by Dr Fatah Kashanchi, Professor at George Mason University and Dr Heather Branscome  Senior Scientist at ATCC. The pair talked about how to accelerate drug development with assay ready cells.

Exhibitor tutorials

FUJIFILM Cellular Dynamics

DDW’s Megan Thomas attended the Exhibitor Tutorial titled: Reducing the requirements for animal testing with advanced accessible human iPSC-based 3D models. Coby Carlson, Director of Applications & New Technologies at FUJIFILM Cellular Dynamics discussed the company’s high value human cell types differentiated from iPSC-lines.

One of the emerging applications for this technology is construction of highly relevant human model systems to replicate human disease and move away from less relevant animal models. Carlson presented a series of case studies incorporating cell types such as cardiomyocytes, hepatocytes, neurons and glia into 3D structures ideal to begin modelling human tissues for advanced drug discovery.

Bruker

Bruker Cell Analysis’ goal at SLAS2025 is to show attendees how the company can help transform drug discovery with Bruker technology. This was through a range of activities on Monday 27 January, from exhibitor tutorials to poster presentations.

The first Bruker Biosenses turorial was titled: “A pipeline to success: Biosensor tools enable next generation therapeutic molecules” and highlighted three advanced automated biophysical tools: high-throughput, multiplexing Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) for rapid candidate identification and detailed lead development, switchSENSE for analysing avidity effects and multispecific binders, and single-cell Interaction Cytometry for real-time kinetic measurements directly on cells to assess native binding properties. This was presented by Professor Ulrich Rant, CSO Bruker Biosensors and Cyrill Brunner, Senior Application Scientist, Bruker Switzerland.

The second was Bruker Cellular Analysis’ tutorial titled: “Advancing therapeutic antibody discovery: High-throughput single B cell screening for challenging targets and ADCs on the Beacon platform”. This session showcased how Beacon’s microfluidic technology isolates and analyses single B cells, allowing researchers to efficiently identify rare, high-quality therapeutic antibodies, including a case study of how Twist Bioscience has developed a novel approach to screening for antibody internalisation on the Beacon platform to accelerate the development of ADCs. This tutorial was presented by Vincent Pai, Director of Product Management at Bruker Cellular Analysis and Megan DeNicola, Senior Scientist, Upstream Antibody Discovery, Biopharma Solutions at Twist Bioscience.

New products

Portal Biotechnologies

Portal Biotechnologies is a New Product Award Finalist for its Galaxy platform. DDW’s Megan Thomas attended a presentation given by Portal CEO Armon Sharei, who shared insight on how Portal uses mechanical deformation to deliver cargo to diverse cell types while maintaining cell health. It has the potential for transformational impact across fields from drug discovery to bedside cell therapies. By simplifying delivery of impermeable compounds and probes, Portal could enable new insights in drug discovery.

MIMETAS

MIMETAS has launched OrganoPlate Uniflow (UF), the first commercially available unidirectional, gravity-driven pumpless flow system for drug discovery and disease research, which has made its debut at SLAS2025 as a key addition to MIMETAS’ service portfolio. This technology addresses challenges in traditional flow systems by enabling physiologically accurate tissue models that replicate natural biological conditions.

Tecan

Tecan unveiled Veya, a liquid handling platform designed to overcome key barriers in lab automation by offering an accessible and versatile platform that streamlines complex workflows and enables data-driven decision-making, while reducing downtime and enhancing productivity.

Veya combines AI-enhanced automation, prebuilt workflows and an analytics interface, OneView, to simplify complex tasks, including multiomics workflows.

Celltrio

Another launch at SLAS2025 was the RoboCell from Celltrio, which improves the cell culturing process while completely adapting to laboratory processes and protocols. It increases throughput and efficiency with multi-tasking features and 24/7 automatic operation. This frees scientists and technicians from highly labour-intensive processes so they may focus more on research, analysis, and process design.

Meet the Exhibitor: Sphere Fluidics

The sponsored DDW Meet the Exhibitor Vodcast is a series of interviews from key industry events. Here, Megan Thomas, Multimedia Editor at DDW, interviews Jay Gerlach, VP of Marketing at Sphere Fluidics, in the lead up to SLAS2025 in San Diego.

At SLAS2025, you will have the opportunity to meet the team from Sphere Fluidics to discuss the company, its products, and key opportunities in drug discovery with which the company can assist.