SLAS celebrates innovative new products, startups and scientific excellence at European conference in Vienna

SLAS, the Society of Laboratory Automation and Screening, after a six-year wait to reschedule the originally planned event in spring of 2020, welcomed 137 exhibitors and more than 1,500 registrants from more than 30 countries at its 2026 Europe Conference and Exhibition, May 19-21.

It was great to finally get this one off the ground. The exhibition was buzzing with active visitors exploring new laboratory automation technologies and services. Next year's conference in Hamburg, Germany (May 25-27) is already set up for success with numerous exhibitors pre-booking their spot."

Vicki Loise, Chief Executive Officer, SLAS

The exhibition also features Innovation AveNEW, a designated area featuring up to 12 start-up companies, and giving them access to new customers and an opportunity to compete for the Ignite Award and €5000. The winner of the Ignite Award this year was Trince, featuring its product, LumiPore^™, a photoporation platform offering an innovative solution to a time-consuming technical process. Award judges said that Trince presented a clear go-to-market strategy, with its platform offering an alternative intracellular delivery technology for research and clinical use.

SLAS also presents up to three New Product Awards to exhibitors at the show. The winners this year are:

• Bionomous for its Sortivo technology. Sortivo is a next-generation large-particle sorter that bridges the gap between New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) and high-throughput screening. SLAS judges said Sortivo represents a whole workflow integrated into a single product. With the emergence of NAMs this device can really make a difference in how next-generation particle sorting can be applied in the lab.
• Cube Biotech for its PlateX MP^™ Strep-Tactin^®XT MagBeads product. PlateX MP^™ plates enable automated membrane protein purification from lysate to analytical-grade samples in just two hours. SLAS judges chose PlateX MP because the innovation was not limited to their scientific innovation but the integration of the full workflow into a consumable, reducing inconvenience and mistakes from working in a cold room and providing a huge time saving and higher yield for tricky membrane proteins.
• nNano AG for the CERTUS RIVO product. CERTUS RIVO is a high-precision, contactless 16-channel dispensing system for low-volume liquid handling in the nanoliter to microliter range. The judges selected the CERTUS RIVO stating nNano took an existing product and reimagined the function and technology to reflect user needs, particularly the capacity of the channels, the reagent recovery and the shaking, precision and speed.

To honor excellence in scientific research, SLAS presented Niall McIntyre from Imperial College London with a Student Poster Award and €500 for his poster titled "Manufacturing a High-Throughput, Label-Free Platform for Rapid Screening of Drug Permeation Across in vitro Plasma Membrane Models." The judging panel selected McIntyre because he demonstrated a clear trajectory for his research to become an established tool in the drug discovery process. His presentation was clear and engaging, and he responded remarkably well to challenging questions.