Cambridge Healthtech Institute's 5th Annual 'Molecular Display: The Chemistry Set for Proteins and Small Molecules' Conference.

This meeting covered recent advances in the molecular display of peptides, proteins and nucleotides, including selection and mutational technologies. The scientific organisers assembled an impressive array of 'molecular display' heavyweights. It promised to be a stimulating meeting and the events of the following 2 days did not disappoint. The majority of the presentations were concerned with the development of novel display technologies and processes. Antibodies currently represent > 30% of the biopharmaceutical market, but are likely to be superseded by more efficient display frameworks which avoid their inherent drawbacks. In order to generate such novel therapeutics and diagnostics, high affinity reagents must be selected and/or generated from hitherto unexplored nucleic acid sequences and displayed on suitable frameworks. This meeting was concerned with the identification, generation and validation of novel sequences and framework molecules. The keynote addresses were followed by four themed sessions entitled New technologies and target selection, The discovery of small molecules using phage display, Applications in proteomics, and Novel therapeutics and diagnostics. There was a panel discussion after each session.