IBC's 19th Annual Antibody Engineering conference welcomed more than 700 participants to the beautiful Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina in San Diego, California for five days of presentations, posters and networking related to advances in basic and applied antibody and binder engineering.

Sessions at the 2008 meeting included:

• Microarrays and Nanotechnology for Antibody Discovery and Analysis
• The Single-Chain Fv and its Fusion Proteins: 20 Years Old and Coming of Age
• The Theory, Practice and Use of Libraries Based on Restricted Amino Acid Sets
• Are Non-Antibody Scaffolds Really any Better than Antibody Fragments?
• Intrabodies Revisited
• Novel Antibody Targets and Applications
• Antibodies in a Complex Environment: Target Selection in Relation to Efficacy
• Mechanism of Antibody Action Revisited

The companion conference, IBC's 6th Annual Antibody Therapeutics, offered case studies of therapeutic antibodies now progressing through clinical development, along with key updates on the business and legal climate for these exciting drug products.

An esteemed international speaker faculty of more than 100 prompted a spirited dialog during the general sessions of the meeting, while nearly 100 poster presenters enjoyed one on one dialog with their viewers during the extensive networking time in the poster and exhibit hall.

The Scientific Sponsor of the conference was The Antibody Society, which was formed in 2007 to broadly further the interests of antibody and binder engineering as well as antibody/binder therapeutic development, to ensure advancement of the field while maintaining the safe and thorough testing of future therapeutic agents.