TITLE: Pipetting Best Practices

Of all the factors that contribute to the performance of a pipette, the most critical ones are the skills and expertise of the operator.

This seminar is provided to help you achieve the best possible performance with your pipettes – from function to technique, and applications.

We will review the basics of pipetting, including:

• Different pipetting techniques and when to use them
• Quick tips and tricks to achieve better accuracy
• Factors affecting the accuracy and how you can minimize pipetting errors
• Preventing cross contamination

TITLE: Centrifuge and Rotor Safety

This seminar is designed to enhance laboratory safety by providing comprehensive knowledge on the use of centrifuges.

Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of centrifugation principles, properties and correct usage of rotors.

By improving knowledge in these areas, the seminar aims to significantly reduce the risk of accidents to personnel and prevent damage to laboratory equipment.

This session is essential for ensuring a safer and more efficient laboratory environment.

Agenda:

• Improve knowledge of centrifugation
• Improve knowledge of rotor properties and correct use
• Reduce the risk of accidents to personnel and damage to equipment

TITLE: Optimizing Cell Culture Workflows: Plastics, Media, Serum and Specialized Solutions for Reliable Results

Successful cell culture depends on the careful selection of every component of the workflow: from the culture vessel and surface to the media, supplements and serum used to support cell growth.

This session provides a practical overview of Thermo Fisher Scientific’s cell culture solutions, with a focus on Nunc™ Cell Culture Plastics, Gibco™ Cell Culture Essentials and Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS), together with specialized solutions for IVF and advanced cell culture applications.

We will explore how culture vessel design and surface characteristics can influence cell attachment, growth and reproducibility; discuss key considerations when selecting media, supplements and serum; and highlight how consistency and quality across the workflow can help reduce experimental variability.

The session will connect product selection with real laboratory workflows and provide practical guidance for researchers working across cell biology, life sciences and specialized cell culture applications.

TITLE: Comprehensive Solutions for the Formulation and Spatial Characterization of 3D Immune Models with Thermo Fisher

Three-dimensional (3D) cell culture systems, including organoids, spheroids, and tumoroids, are rapidly becoming widely used in immune modeling. By recapitulating tissue architecture, cellular heterogeneity, and diffusion-driven gradients, these models provide a physiologically relevant framework to investigate complex mechanisms such as immune cell infiltration, activation, and therapeutic response. However, standardizing both the generation and analysis of these complex microenvironments remains a key challenge.

Once established, extracting meaningful biological insights requires robust and spatially resolved characterization. Advanced imaging plays a central role by enabling both structural and functional analysis of complex 3D models. Brightfield imaging allows rapid monitoring of spheroid size and morphology, while fluorescence-based approaches enable multiplexed analysis of immune and cellular markers.

Thermo Fisher Scientific streamlines these workflows by combining high-performance imaging platforms with validated reagents, following a philosophy of user-friendly systems. Automated systems (e.g., Invitrogen™ EVOS™ M7000 Imaging System) enable fast, reproducible imaging for routine monitoring and live cell analysis.

High-content confocal screening platforms (e.g., Thermo Scientific™ CellInsight™ CX7 LZR Pro High Content Screening Platform) enable automated, multiparametric imaging of thick 3D samples. Finally, spatial imaging solutions (e.g., EVOS™ S1000 Spatial Imaging System) enable up to 9-color imaging for fast detailed tissue mapping.

TITLE: Building the Data Behind AI-Driven Protein Engineering

Protein research is increasingly moving from discovering useful proteins in nature toward engineering proteins with properties tailored to specific applications. Machine-learning approaches can accelerate this transition by helping researchers navigate vast protein sequence spaces and prioritize promising designs. However, these approaches depend on experimental sequence–function data, which can require substantial time, effort and resources to generate.

For many laboratories, building and testing hundreds or thousands of protein variants may therefore make AI-driven protein engineering appear difficult to access. Traditional workflows based on cloning, transformation and cell-based expression are powerful and well established, but can become a practical bottleneck as experimental scale increases.

New experimental approaches can help lower this barrier by simplifying the path from sequence design to functional testing and making parallel evaluation of protein variants more practical. This allows to create datasets at a scale that can support computationally guided protein engineering without requiring exhaustive exploration of sequence space.

By combining accessible experimental workflows with computational approaches, protein engineering can move toward a more iterative design–build–test–learn cycle—bringing data-driven protein engineering within reach of more research laboratories.

TITLE: More Biology from Less Sample: Multiplex Gene and Protein Analysis with Luminex and High-Sensitivity ProQuantum Assays

Modern life science research increasingly requires the analysis of multiple biological targets while working with limited sample volumes.

This presentation will introduce complementary solutions for targeted gene and protein analysis, including Luminex® xMAP® technology, Invitrogen™ ProcartaPlex™ multiplex immunoassays, Invitrogen™ QuantiGene™ Plex gene expression assays, and Invitrogen™ ProQuantum™ high-sensitivity immunoassays.

We will explore how ProcartaPlex enables simultaneous quantification of multiple protein targets, while QuantiGene Plex provides multiplex RNA analysis using hybridization-based branched-DNA signal amplification without the need for RNA purification. ProQuantum assays offer an additional solution for highly sensitive targeted protein detection using qPCR-based readout and very low sample volumes.

Together, these technologies provide researchers with flexible approaches to obtain more biological information from precious samples and select the detection strategy best suited to their research question.

TITLE: Plantago Metabolomics by LC–Orbitrap MS: From Broad Chemical Profiling to Bioactive Candidate Discovery

Plant metabolomics is challenged by chemical diversity, in-source fragmentation, and structural isomerism. This work presents an integrated UHPLC–Orbitrap MSⁿ workflow for comprehensive characterization and bioactivity-guided prioritization of metabolites from Plantago lanceolata leaves and Plantago ovata husk.

Low-energy stepped HCD at 10/50/80% normalized collision energy improved grouping of in-source fragments by 55% in positive mode and 16% in negative mode, while bioassay-guided chromatographic fractionation was introduced to progressively reduce extract complexity and associate defined chromatographic regions with biological responses. Complementary ddMS², ddMS³, AcquireX™ Deep Scan, and Real-Time Library Search balanced metabolome coverage and annotation confidence, yielding 472 putative identifications in P. lanceolata leaves and 233 in P. ovata husk.

The workflow was subsequently extended to solvent-selected extracts, chromatographic fractions, and HUVEC-based assays measuring VCAM-1, ICAM-1, TNF-α, IL-1β, nitric oxide, reactive oxygen species, and cell viability. LC–MS features are prioritized using biological response, endothelial relevance, identification confidence, abundance, and practical isolatability. Ongoing work focuses on targeted isolation, authentic-standard confirmation, and biological re-testing of purified candidates.

This study demonstrates how advanced LC–MSⁿ metabolomics can connect broad plant chemical profiling with the early-stage discovery of biologically relevant natural products.

TITLE: The Use of Innovative Separation Media and Structures for Proteomics and Therapeutic Proteins and Oligonucleotides

With the increasing challenges in complexity and throughput for large molecule samples, new approaches in separation media and structures are needed to match the requirements for identification and characterization of such samples.

This has opened the way for extra-high resolution micropillar structure columns for nanoLC and capLC columns, to target bottom-up proteomics workflows, as well as small polymeric and monodisperse particle columns for proteins and oligonucleotides, using either ion exchange or reversed phase chromatography.

In this presentation, we will discuss these innovative approaches to improve protein and oligonucleotide separations, and show examples how these approaches perform in combination with UV and MS detection.