Synthetic Biology for Future Health

Synthetic biology has been widely championed worldwide as a driving force for the ‘bioeconomy’. This new conference will showcase the latest research within synthetic biology that impacts human health. The conference will present how technologies from synthetic biology are delivering innovations across clinical health applications and leading towards improved global health.

The meeting will bring together researchers working on synthetic biology, biotechnology, genomics and medical sciences, along with industry members from pharma and biotech companies, and investors and funders in this growing research area. It will address how the technologies coming out of synthetic biology impact both advanced healthcare in developed countries (e.g. personalised medicines, T-cell therapies) and global wide-impact, such as very low-cost diagnostics and self-replicating living therapies. In addition, the conference aims to provide a reflection on where resources and work are succeeding and where more effort needs to be placed to ensure equitable global outcomes.

Discussions will focus on a variety of exciting topics, including:

• Engineering gene regulation
• Cells engineered as therapies
• Designing synthetic biomolecules
• SocioTechnological readiness and entrepreneurship
• Infectious disease and biosensing
• Synthetic genomes, cells, and multicellularity

Keynote speakers

Yvonne Y. Chen – University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA

Jason Chin – University of Cambridge, UK

Confirmed speakers

Yasunori Aizawa – Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
Sonja Billerbeck– University of Groningen, the Netherlands
Francesca Ceroni – Imperial College London, UK
Lei Dai – SIAT Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Hana El-Samad – UCSF/Altos Labs, USA
Roman Jerala – National institute of Chemistry, Slovenia
Mo Khalil – Boston University, USA
Megan Palmer – Stanford University, USA
Manuel Porcar – Universidad de Valencia, Spain
Velia Siciliano – Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy
Elly Tanaka – Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Austria
Chayasith Uttamapinant – VISTEC, Thailand

Organisers – Wellcome Connecting Science

Lucy Criddle, Conference & Events Organiser
Nagehan Ramazanoglu Bahadir, Scientific Programme Officer

This conference will be a hybrid meeting – with onsite or virtual attendance.