Memories or 3DCC, Goa, India

The International Conference on Advances in 3D Cell Culture aka 3DCC (https://www.3dccsummit.com) held in South Goa, India last week was an engaging meeting with a very high standard of science and discussions. The organisation of the conference was immaculately run by the team from ICT Mumbai, and the Mumbai Biocluster led by Prajakta Dandekar Jain and Ratnesh Jain. I enjoyed the candle lighting opening ceremony followed by the Indian National Anthem which was sung with great enthusiasm.

All delegates received official photographs from the meeting. I have dotted some throughout this blog.

Clive asking questions during the session debates.

I was representing ESTIV, PeptiMatrix and Roper Toxicology Consulting at 3DCC, so no end of formal duties.

You can see that I was highly engaged with this speaker.

I was the moderator for an interactive panel discussion "Navigating the Regulatory Pathways and Policies for NAMs" with Charu Chandrasekera (Founder and Executive Director of the Canadian Institute for Animal-Free Science), Thomas Hartung (Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), Maurice Whelan (Head of EURL ECVAM, JRC of the European Commission) and Annam Visala (Joint Drugs Controller (India)). We decided to open the questions to the audience right from the start and this led to a very interesting and lively back and forth discussions between panel and audience.

The panel in action!

The official panel photograph.

A presentation for Charu.

A presentation for Thomas.

I am super proud of my plaque.

ESTIV sponsored 2 awards; best oral and best poster. I scored all of the 5 oral presentations alone. As there were so many posters and other poster awards from other institutions, we were divided into pairs and this gave us about 8 posters each. I was paired with Carlo Alberto Paggi (Co-Founder, Chiron). There was a complex scoring system which gave points for different aspects of the layout and information in the poster, a short presentation of a few minutes by the lead author with points for being on time, and answering questions, amongst other scores. This was very hard with a very high standard of poster and summery presentations from everyone we spoke to.

Carlo and Clive busy scoring. Notice how we complement one another so well with Carlo in his immaculate suit and full head of hair versus Clive in a bird shirt and a well shaved bald head!

Once all the scores were in, we then needed to go and see all the highest scoring posters and decide which award should got with which poster. So, non stop education here.

The organisers gave me time to present on who we are at ESTIV and our relationships with other organisations such as ASCCT in the US and JSAAE in Japan and now our relationship with 3DCC.

As you can see, I also took this opportunity to identify replacement technologies for animal derived media (such as Matrigel and Fetal Calf Serum) used in 3D cell culture, organoids, MPS and bioprinting with animal free chemically defined media highlighting the NC3Rs website (https://nc3rs.org.uk/3rs-resource-library/moving-animal-free-scaffolds-construction-3d-organotypic-models) for information.

The ESTIV best oral presentation went to Manisha Behera for the presentation "Bioactive AC-EPD Coatings on Mg Alloys for Bone Regeneration".

The ESTIV best poster presentation went to Pradnya Salve for the poster "Microfluidic Triple-co-culture Model of Age-related Macular Degeneration for Advancing Retinal Drug Development".

I was pleased to present a poster for PeptiMatrix. There was a lot of interest in the technology as we work towards replacing the animal derived Matrigel with the animal free chemically defined PeptiMatrix products.

Clive proudly showing his PeptiMatrix poster.

The poster in all it's glory!

There is always some time to catch up with friends and colleagues.

Rahul Date (JRF Global) and Clive in deep discussion.

The 2 standout things for me are the people of India and their food. Thank you to everyone who attended 3DCC, it was great to meet you all and learn and share developments and the future of 3D cell culture. I cannot wait to return!

The truly most extravagant Thali plate that I have every seen or eaten. It tasted even better than it looked too.

The perfect start to the day; masala dosa.