As you receive this issue, Informa’s BPI West conference is taking place at the San Diego Convention Center on 14–17 March 2022, with live digital panel discussions the following week. People appear to be cautious but eager to get back to live-conference attendance. BPI’s senior technical editor, Cheryl Scott, will make the journey down there to represent us this year, so if you plan to be there, please take a moment to visit with her. BPI West was the first…
Happy 2022 to all of BPI’s loyal and supportive authors, readers, and advertisers. Despite continuing pandemic impediments, your industry continues to show remarkable flexibility and resilience. As technologies evolved to meet the demands for vaccines, tests, and treatments for COVID-19, new hybrid options have opened up opportunities for people to meet and collaborate. Given the changing fortunes of our own publishing industry, managing this hybrid, controlled-publication model (peer-review + trade/B2B content) requires some agility of our own. So it should…
One of our annual tasks as a publication staff is to develop next year’s editorial calendar. How well are we anticipating new directions in research, development, and manufacturing? Are we including interesting and forward-thinking topics — or relying too heavily on frequent, overintroduced themes? We have seen an overall generational change in conference attendance and our reading audience. So we also ask ourselves whether we are correctly assessing information needs and providing accessible levels of detail. It’s not a perfect…
As the biopharmaceutical industry continues to mature and grow, so too does the need to educate a broader audience of biopharmaceutical professionals interested in hearing, understanding, and applying the latest science and technology trends that support and in many cases are transforming today’s bioprocesses. To reach this extended and engaged audience, BioProcess International created the BPI Theater Series: a live, interactive program that provides bioprocessing content to traditional, noncore biopharmaceutical conference programs. It provides attendees with the opportunity to interact…
At the recent Phacilitate Gene and Cell Therapy Conference (27–29 January 2014 in Washington, DC), BPI’s editor in chief Anne Montgomery and publisher Brian Caine spoke with Richard Grant, executive vice president, life sciences, at Invetech (www.invetech.com.au); and Brian Hanrahan, program manager at Invetech. They and their colleagues were instrumental in advising us how to bring ongoing discussions of regenerative medicines into BPI four years ago for the first Cell Therapy Supplement issue. We asked them to comment generally on…
The third annual IBC Cell Therapy Bioprocessing conference was held in Bethesda, MD, on 21–22 October 2013. It brought pioneers in the development of cell-based therapies together with companies that have enabling technologies, such as bioreactors, cell culture media, and advanced monitoring software. After the conference, I discussed the highlights and key themes coming out of the event with Dr. Phil Vanek, general manager of cell bioprocessing at GE Healthcare Life Sciences in Westborough, MA. Also an instructor for advanced…
Happy 2014! Here is how the new year is shaping up for us so far. Our rotating editorial themes will remain much the same — but our manufacturing theme now shares the spotlight with increased visibility of analytical discussions. Our senior technical editor, Cheryl Scott, has highlighted specific methods in each issue of 2013 and will continue that throughout this year as well. For a list of her 2014 topics, take a look at our editorial calendar…
With the approaching holiday season and the end of the year — how can that be? — we find ourselves pretty well settled into plans for our 2014 editorial calendar. As a team, we’ve met during the summer to brainstorm and share the results of our research into the subjects of next year’s special reports and supplements. What should we focus on next? What old themes and supplement topics need to be revisited, and what new topics…
When the editors of BPI asked us at BPSA to put together a content-rich article on single-use issues, we were happy to do so. Our challenge was how to bring in multiple viewpoints about the growing business of single-use that would be a “quick read” for the BPI audience. The answer: an expert colloquy. Represented here are several of the most qualified industry spokespersons in single-use — all are members of BPSA and speak as directors of the alliance. Their…
When the editors of BPI asked us at BPSA to put together a content-rich article for the single-use supplement, we were happy to do so. Our challenge was how to bring in multiple viewpoints about the growing business of single-use that would be a “quick read” for the BPI audience. The answer: an expert colloquy (a “conversational exchange or topical dialogue”). Represented here are several of the most qualified industry spokespersons in single-use — all are members of BPSA and…