The First International Conference On Single-Cell And Spatial Omics is held in Guangzhou, China: the Golden Age of Single Cell Analysis

GUANGZHOU, China, May 8, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- On April 16^th 2023, the first International Conference on Single-cell and Spatial Omics (TICSSO-1) has come to a grand conclusion. The conference brings together on site over 2,000 professionals from academia, research and development, investment and other fields interested to the conference topics in Guangzhou. The conference webcasts also garner significant online attention, with a record of over 548,245 live streaming audience around the world, from countries including the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Japan, Australia, Russia, and other countries. The conference is reported by more than 200 domestic and foreign media outlets, including People's Daily, Southern Daily, Information Times, and Sino-US Times.

Single cell and spatial omics technologies, with a series of significant breakthroughs in recent years ,have been extensively applied in tumor, developmental biology, neuroscience, immunology, infectious diseases, and other areas, acting as one of the hot spots in researches of life science, drug development, and precision clinical medicine. Relevant data analysis expects that the prospective market size for global single-cell analysis will exceed $8 billion by 2028.

5 Academicians from U.S. and Chinese leads TICSSO-1 as honorary Chairmen

Five honorary Chairmen leads TICSSO-1 and they are Dr. Sherman Weissman, Sterling Professor of Yale University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences of USA; Dr. David Weitz, Mallinckrodt Professor of Harvard University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences of USA; Dr. Li Jin, Professor of Fudan University, a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences; Dr. Qimin Zhan, Professor of Peking University, a member of Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Dr. Tianming Gao, Professor of Southern Medical University, a member of Chinese Academy of Engineering. The five academicians deliver highly inspiring academic speeches. Professor Dr. Li Ma, the Vice President of Southern Medical University and an official representative of the organizer, along with Mr. Hongqing Li, Associate Counsellor of Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Bureau and the local government representative, make a special visit to congratulate and support the conference. Ms. Fanglin Zheng, the President of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology in the USA (CAST-USA), extends her congratulations through video.

Dr. David Weitz from Harvard University, and a pioneer for high-throughput single cell transcriptomics, highlights that single-cell sequencing is a significant technological milestone in life science. He explains that this technology allows scientists to acquire a more profound understanding of cells and genes, which has in turn enabled them to better comprehend the molecular mechanisms of complicate biomedical processes and diseases at single-cell level. He expects that the participants of TICSSO-1 including academic experts and industry professionals, will be inspired to expand their explorations while collaborating each other to promote new directions and discoveries in variant fields of biomedical research.

According to Dr. Sherman Weissman from Yale University, one of the pioneers in whole genome sequencing and the Human Genome Project, the emergence of single-cell sequencing technology has fundamentally transformed our understanding of molecular biology. New theories in addition with new technologies are emerging in response to the vast amount of data generated in single-cell sequence and spatial analysis. The new tools such as ChatGPT might be utilized to effectively mine, analyze, and interpret the data, which will boost the efficiency of single-cell researches and applications in the future.

During his speech, Dr. Li Jin, Professor and President of Fudan University as well as President of the Greater Bay Area Institute of Precision Medicine, who is the pioneer in phenomics, highlights the significant advancements achieved in the single-cell and spatial-omics industry in recent years. He states that these groundbreaking technologies have become widely used in both basic and clinical researches in biomedicine. Dr. Jin emphasizes that the combination of single-cell omics and phenomics in the future will definitely push the life science research to a new height. He expresses his belief that with the efforts of international and domestic experts, the field of single-cell and spatial omics will soon enter a golden era of robust development.

"Single-cell and spatial omics technology is a cutting-edge tool for precision medicine research and application." The comments by Professor Qimin Zhan of Peking University, former Executive Vice President of Peking University, and a top molecular oncologist, is highly encouraging. According to Dr. Zhan, single cell technology has been deployed in the "13th Five-Year Plan" Biotechnology Innovation Special Plan as a promising technology. When combining with spatial omics, it owns the potential to revolutionize the model of medical research and basic prevention and control of diseases, providing innovative solutions to precision medicine strategies and genetic health problems.

Dr. Tianming Gao from Southern Medical University, an top neuroscience expect in molecular mental health study, remarks that in recent years, single-cell sequencing has made continuous advances and has progressed to the stage marked low-cost, high-throughput, high-accuracy and high-automation ability. With rapid improvement in efficiency and application, this technology is now playing an indispensable role in neuroscience, besides other fields, and it has become a central focus in life science, and medical diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Gao believes that this conference provides a top-level academic exchange platform for researchers, which will greatly enhance the cooperation and innovation among single-cell industry experts and lend impetus to its development.

Over 200 keynote presentations share a feast of ideas, building industry-academia-research linkage

Over 200 experts, scholars and industry elites from universities, research institutes and renowned enterprises participate in in-depth discussions around the theme of "Focusing on Academic Frontiers, Accelerating Scientific and Technological Transformation". Multiple forums in parallel are held in the conference, including "the main forum", "multi-omics frontiers", "spatial omics development", "clinical translation and application", "bioinformatics", "technology and equipment",, and "International Forum". A variety of topics are discussed during the conference.

During the main forum, Dr. Fuchou Tang, Professor from the School of Life Sciences of Peking University, presents the technology advancements of single-cell chromatin accessibility analysis based on the third-generation sequencing. These researches bring new discoveries on human early embryo development, germ cell development and carcinogenesis. Dr. Tang explored the single-cell transcriptomic sequencing, marking the beginning of single-cell sequencing era.

Among others, these eminent professors and researchers delivery lectures during the TICSSO-1:. Dr. Bing Su from Shanghai Jiaotong University, Dr. Guoji Guo from Zhejiang University, Dr. Yuehai Ke from Zhejiang University, Dr. Xiaoyang Zhao from Southern Medical University, Dr. Chaoyong Yang from Shanghai Jiaotong University, Dr. Aibin He from Peking University, Dr. Yunlong Cao from Peking University, Dr. Jinxin Bei from Sun Yat-sen University, Dr. Rong Fan from Yale University, Dr. Chengran Xu from Peking University, Dr. Guangdun Peng from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr. Gang Cao from Huazhong Agricultural University, Prof, Dr. Guobing Chen from Jinan University, Dr. Ge Gao from Peking University, Dr. Jianbin Wang from Tsinghua University, Dr. Yuxia Zhang from Guangzhou Women and Children Medical Center, Dr. Xianting Ding from Shanghai Jiaotong University, Dr. Yong Zhang from Tongji University, Dr. Xianwen Ren from Beijing Changping Laboratory, Dr. Guangchuang Yu from Southern Medical University, Dr. Dong Wang from Southern Medical University, Dr. Kun Qu from University of Science and Technology of China, and Dr. Xinghua Pan from Southern Medical University, who severs as the Director of Guangdong Key Laboratory of Single Cell Technology and Application. The organizing committee of TICSSO pledges to keep track of and report on the latest developments of these experts.

The TICSSO-1 also holds an International Youth Forum, focusing on the frontier developments of single-cell sequencing technology and the opportunities and challenges it presents. The forum invites young scholars from overseas to share their recent progress, and to communicate with the attendants for their insight. These raising stars are from esteemed institutions such as Cambridge University, Yale University, UCSD, Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Microbiology and Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, New York Genome Center,  Weizmann Institute of Science, Wellcome Sanger Institute, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute, Southern Medical University and other institution .During the forum, the discussion fuels creativity and enthusiasm for collaboration for everyone in the event.

During the conference, two sessions of roundtable panel discussions are held on site. "How to promote the high-quality development of single-cell and spatial omics" as the theme of the academic roundtable, and "How to build a healthy ecological environment for the sustainable development of single-cell spatial omics industry" as the theme of the corporate roundtable. This event is attended by prominent exhibitors from both domestic and international companies, including BD, NanoString, Gene Company Limited, 10x Genomics, PacBio, Mission Bio, MobiDrop, Novel Bio, Oebiotech, Cytek Biosciences, Tenk Genomics, Salus Biomed, Dynamic Biosystems, ThunderBio, MemVerge, Sequanta, Capital Bio, Novogene, Anoroad, Biomarker, BioLegend, Illumina, Applied Protein Technology, Abiosciences, Element Biosciences, SequMed, Seekgene, MGI, Singleron.

As a part of the TICSSO-1, TICSSO-1 International Virtual Conference was held during the Covid19 pandemic in November 7 of 2022. Dr. Alex K. Shalek from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dr. Sarah A. Teichmann from Cambridge University, Dr. Jay Shendure from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Washington, Dr. Muzlifah Haniffa from the University of Newcastle, Dr. Steven Henikoff from the University of Washington Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Dr. Siyuan Wang from Yale University, Dr. Kun Zhang from University of California, San Diego, Dr. Rong Fan from Yale University, Dr. Hongjie Li from Baylor College of Medicine, and Dr. Xiaojiang Xu from Tulane University School of Medicine, Dr. Junwen Wang from the University of Hong Kong along with other distinguished guests, deliver excellent lectures and discussions. More than 100,000 global peers joined this online event.

Additionally, the ceremony of the Single Cell Pioneer Awards is also held during the conference. More than 30 well known industrial entities win the awards for variants of extraordinary contributions to the development of single cell and spatial omics, and to the event.

As one of the largest and most influential conferences in the field of single-cell omics and spatial omics, the 1^st TICSSO Conference wins an great success and public attention. The aim of the conference is to build a high-level international exchange and collaboration platform for researchers and industry members to gather wisdom and power for advancing single cell omics and spatial omics. Through this effort, the conference hopes to further promote technology innovation, theoretical breakthrough, and transformation upgrading in this field. TICSSO is an unprecedented academic feast that allows the frontier scientists in different disciplines associated with single cell omics to communicate and collide with sparks of wisdom, pushing the atmosphere to the new climax. Many participants express that they are full of harvest and are looking forward to play in the next TICSSO conference.

The International Conference on Single Cell and Spatial Omics (TICSSO) is organized by the TICSSO organizing committee, initiated and co-chaired by Dr. Xinghua Pan from Southern Medical University, Dr. Fuchou Tang from Peking University, Dr. Guoji Guo from Zhejiang University and a group of other leaders in this field. The conference are co-organized by Southern Medical University, CSBMB Division of Medical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology,  Chinese Association for Science and Technology USA, Tumor Marker Committee of Chinese Anti-Cancer Association, Greater Bay Area Institute of Precision Medicine (Guangzhou), Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Single Cell Technology and Application, Guangdong Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Singleseq.com, etc. The preparations for the 2^nd TICSSO conference have initiated.

SOURCE TICSSO