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02.12.2019

First LifeTime meeting on Single Cell Analysis held in Vienna

The LifeTime initiative, together with IMBA – Institute of Molecular Biotechnology by the Austrian Academy of Sciences – hosted its first symposium in Austria on Single Cell Analysis in Biology and Medicine at the Vienna BioCenter. LifeTime receives funding from Horizon 2020 and was initiated under the EU FET-Flagship program to unite and coordinate European research dedicated to biological analysis on the single-cell level. The initiative brings together stakeholders from over 20 countries.

Last Friday, over 200 researchers working in the Single Cell field all came together for the first Viennese meeting, where a strong emphasis was placed on networking and scientific exchange. With talks and coffee breaks providing the perfect framework, many fruitful discussions and dialogue between scientists were established.
Nikolaus Rajewsky (MDC Berlin), one of the founders of LifeTime, delivered a keynote on the principles of gene regulation and medical applications of Single Cell analyses.

Jürgen Knoblich, Scientific Director at IMBA, serves on the steering committee of LifeTime. Together with his group, he supported this Europe-wide movement since its very beginning: “Single-cell technology is currently revolutionizing biology and medicine on all levels. As many groups in Austria are working on this topic, we decided to organize a conference together with the Science Ministry, to promote and foster scientific exchange within the scientific community under the LifeTime patronage”. By now, LifeTime is a vision shared by over 90 scientific organizations across Europe with the support of more than 70 companies internationally.

LifeTime’s ultimate goal is to transform healthcare as we know it. By generating new tools and technologies, it aims to greatly increase the basic understanding of the genome and cell. This way, it intends to find and implement new methods for personalized prevention, early diagnosis and treatment. Multiple fields are expected to be impacted by the LifeTime initiative, including developmental biology, regeneration, stem cell biology, RNA biology, epigenetics, signalling, cancer biology, neurobiology and metabolism.
 

About IMBA
IMBA - Institute of Molecular Biotechnology - is one of the leading biomedical research institutes in Europe focusing on cutting-edge stem cell technologies, functional genomics, and RNA biology. IMBA is located at the Vienna BioCenter, the vibrant cluster of universities, research institutes and biotech companies in Austria. IMBA is a subsidiary of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the leading national sponsor of non-university academic research. The stem cell and organoid research at IMBA is being funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and the City of Vienna.