Instrumental analysis conference highlights major scientific breakthroughs

The Beijing Conference and Exhibition on Instrumental Analysis plays an important role in promoting China's analytical test science and scientific instrument production technology, insiders said.

Approved by the State Council in 1985, the BCEIA is held every two years by the China Association for Instrumental Analysis. After 34 years of development, it has become an important expo in the analytical test field, according to organizers.

The BCEIA consists of a conference and an exhibition. The exhibition serves as a platform to showcase the world's latest technologies, instruments and facilities. It has welcomed exhibitors from some 20 countries and attendees from more than 30 countries and regions in recent years.

More than 25,000 people have signed up to participate in the exhibition, which displayed more than 3,000 instruments and facilities in 2017, including analytical instruments, laboratory equipment, reagents and software.

The exhibition provides a venue for exhibitors to discuss advanced concepts, products, technologies and solutions in the field of analytical science.

The conference always focuses on world frontiers of science and technology and discusses new theories, methods and technologies. It consists of a plenary lecture, 10 parallel sessions, themed forums and other meetings.

Organizers of the conference set up the BCEIA Gold Award in 1989 to promote the innovative development of domestic instrument manufacturing. Since then, more than 160 excellent products have become winners of the award.

Each year's conference gathers leading scientists and academic leaders, such as Nobel laureates Ivar Giaever, Richard Ernst and Koichi Tanaka and other scholars that made great contributions to international analytical science.

Scholars include Robert Samuel Houk, who is among inventors of the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, and G. Thomas, who used a transmission electron microscope in material research for the first time.

Many academicians from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering have attended previous sessions of the conference. The older generation, including physicist Yan Jici and scientist Wang Daheng as well as modern scientists Huang Benli and Wang Erkang, were among spectators in attendance. In 2017, 13 academicians delivered speeches at the conference.

Statistics show that by the end of the 2017 conference, the symposium had published nearly 10,000 high-level academic papers.

This year's conference, which opens on Wednesday and will conclude on Saturday, adds two important international forums.

One of them is the International Summit on Analytical Instrumentation and In Vitro Diagnosis, held on Wednesday morning. The summit has invited noted scholars from the crossing fields of life sciences and analytical science to discuss new tech applications and industrial development trends.

It is held against the backdrop that the country is advancing a national health strategy, pursuing its precision medicine goals and promoting the Made in China 2025 initiative. It is a demonstration for cross-field communication and will help scientists, technicians and also clinic and test staff members from hospitals to exchange opinions, learn about the demand from the industry and spot cooperation opportunities, organizers said.

Zhan Qimin, executive vice-president of Peking University and also a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, is a keynote speaker at the summit. He has promoted precision medicine in China and assumed leadership in healthcare and biopharmaceutical expert teams under national strategic programs.

Zhan's research interest is focused on the molecular pathways involved in the control of cell cycle checkpoint and apoptosis after DNA damage, and the signaling pathways involved in regulation of the maintenance of genomic stability and tumor metastasis.

In recent years, he has paid great attention to the cancer translational study, including molecular diagnosis and personalized therapy.

Xie Xiaoliang, a fellow of the US National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the US National Academy of Medicine, will talk about decoding the functional human genome at the summit. He is an internationally renowned biophysical chemist and the Lee Shau-kee professor at Peking University.

After a career at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, he became the first tenured professor at Harvard University among Chinese scholars who went to the United States since China began the reform and opening-up in the late 1970s.

As a pioneer of single molecule biophysical chemistry, coherent Raman scattering microscopy, and single cell genomics, he made major contributions to the emergence of these fields. In particular, his inventions in single cell genomics have been used in in vitro fertilization to benefit thousands of couples in China by avoiding the transmission of monogenic diseases to their newborns.

Mass spectrometric detection platforms, electrochemiluminescence immunoassay and homogeneous enzyme immunoassay - or known as HEIA in the industry - technology are among topics discussed at this year's summit, which reveals industrial integration and development trends.

Renowned experts will share their insights into the industry at the summit. They are from leading industrial players, including Shenzhen-based Lifotronic Technology, Waters headquartered in the US and Suzhou Evermed Biomedical.

Reports at the summit involve industrial status quo, trends, technologies being studied and those that have been applied.

The International Summit on Scientific Instruments Development, held on Wednesday afternoon, has invited top executives from renowned multinational companies to discuss corporate strategies, business models, financing, acquisitions and mergers, transformation and research and development and will enlighten the development of the Chinese analytical and scientific instrument industry.

The Chinese analytical and scientific instrument market surged in recent years. The average annual increase rate of the market demand is projected to reach 7.3 percent from 2017-22 in China, the highest globally and 1.6 times the world's average. The domestic market demand is forecast to reach $8.8 billion by the end of 2022.

Also, due to national orientation and promotion in fields such as life health, precision medicine, food and healthcare, environmental testing and new materials, the sector of analytical test facilities boomed and high-tech companies have continued to emerge.

The summit aims to serve as an incubator to generate and disseminate ideas for the development of the analytical and scientific instruments sector in China.

Keynote speakers at this year's summit include Mike McMullen, CEO of Agilent Technologies; Teruhisa Ueda, CEO of Shimadzu; and Nam Hoon Kim, vice-president at Global Applied Markets of PerkinElmer.

All the three companies ranked among the top 10 scientific instrument makers worldwide in terms of sales in 2018, according to Chemical & Engineering News, a magazine published by the American Chemical Society.

Atsushi Horiba, group CEO of Horiba, will also deliver a speech at the summit. The Horiba Group is also a leading company that provides analytical and measurement systems throughout the world.

The summit is important and useful for Chinese analytical test companies and popular among domestic and foreign audiences, including managers from domestic and foreign companies as well as executives from higher learning institutions, research organizations, investment and financing professionals and counselors, its organizers said.

As for analytical instrument multinationals, China is a key market, the organizers said. To learn more about the market and steadily innovate and develop in the country, they value communication with other businesses and look for local cooperation.

Insiders said the industry has boomed in China over the past five years yet still has much space for growth.

"In our earlier symposiums, we discussed prospective on scientific research output, new technologies, new methods and new applications. Our focuses of discussions were mainly on academic aspects," said Jiang Guibin, president of the China Association for Instrumental Analysis and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"Now, along with the speedy development of the scientific instrument industry in China, we are ready to contribute more to the industry, to instrument makers and to our fellow scientists and researchers," Jiang said.

The summit is "our first step to tackle these industry related topics. It is a beginning but not an end", he said.

Representatives from multinationals have been invited to the summit to share their successful stories and strategies, in a bid to boost the global expansion of Chinese analytical instrument manufacturers.

songmengxing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 10/23/2019 page12)