The COVID-19 pandemic has raised in 2020 an unprecedented need for diagnostic testing, especially rapid testing, for SARS-CoV-2 infections. POC diagnostic tools, however, have clearly also importance in other domains such as oncology and women’s health, because of the efficiency and convenience factors playing an increasingly important role in a mobile (and sometimes confined) and digitally connected world.

Preceding Annual Meeting Symposium TEDD organizes Sino-Swiss Workshop on Tissue Engineering with visiting scientists from China, USA and Hong Kong.

We invited the researchers from Southeast University (SEU) in China, Swiss academic and industrial research groups active in the field of tissue engineering, to build a strategic alliance. Such an agreement would have many benefits, e.g. exchange of students/researchers between the two institutions, organization of joint scientific events, options for international research projects with complementary expertise of partners.

When experts from all over the world met this year at ZHAW Waedenswil to discuss the possibilities of single-use technologies, the future had already arrived. Most of the developments have been implemented in upstream processing (USP), and complete single-use process platforms up to cubic metre scale are already a reality. This issue looks back on the 2019 BioTech conference, while the next will look at cellular agriculture, a technology that is ushering in a revolution in food production.
 

After a successful first launch of the Swiss Symposium in Point-of-Care Diagnostics at the HES-SO Valais-Wallis in 2017 (CHIMIA 2018, 72, 80), the organization of the 2nd edition of this Symposium was spearheaded by the CSEM team in Landquart. Again close to 200 participants from science, industry and laboratory medicine attended this event during a beautiful and warm autumn day at the awesome Auditorium of the Graubündner Kantonalbank (GKB) in Chur.
 

The chemical industry is under increasing pressure to manufacture chemicals that match not only economic targets but also fulfill societal and environmental objectives. These requirements necessitate the adoption of new approaches and consequently the pace of application of biocatalysis in the chemical industry is increasing. The 10th Wädenswil Day of Life Sciences on June 7th, 2018 focused for the second time on ‘Industrial Biocatalysis’.

In June 2018, experts met at ETH Zurich to discuss technological challenges in advanced cell systems, variant interpretation, novel therapeutics and the integration of clinical data. The translation of these technologies into innovative clinical approaches in oncology, immunology, infectious diseases, neurology and cardiology will be a challenge for the future. Detailed information at http://www.personalizedhealth.nexus. ethz.ch/