The annual Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) conference was held in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, this year. Conference attendance increased for the third year in a row and included 559 attendees and 237 exhibitors. ABRF 2017 will be held in San Diego, California. Over three days, the 45 conference presentations and workshops addressed five topic areas: imaging, core administration, genomics, proteomics and trending topics.

The first plenary session on Monday, “Cancer Genomics: Discovery to Clinical Translation,” was presented by Elaine Mardis, PhD, of the Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine. The focus of her research group is breast cancer and making research samples widely accessible. She pointed researchers to the freeware API of the Database of Curated Mutations, and encouraged a focus on the translation of research into clinical applications.

As a conference, ABRF emphasized supporting its membership of laboratory and administrative professionals, thus the Scientific Sessions were both educational and pragmatic. The imaging topic track began with a primer on light sheet microscopy, then in subsequent sessions on day one expanded the discussion through the evolution of the workflow and implementation in a core facility. On day two, the presentations took a deeper look at the technology applications and technique selection.

Exhibitors showed a wide variety of solutions, including instruments, reagent panels, workflow management software systems and lab administration systems. QIAGEN exhibited its new QIAseq Targeted RNA system for gene expression profiling, featuring molecular barcode counting. The system requires only 25 ng of total, fragmented RNA and 6 hours total time to process. Agilent Technologies highlighted its new 4200 TapeStation System, a complete solution for end-to-end electrophoretic QC for DNA and RNA samples within any NGS, microarray (including array CGH) or qPCR workflow. Samples can be provided in 16-well tube strips or 96-well plates. Reliable results can be reviewed within 1–2 minutes per sample, or less than 90 minutes for 96 samples. The software automatically provides integrity standards for RNA (RNA Integrity Number equivalent) as well as genomic DNA (DNA Integrity Number).

ILab Solutions promoted its system for comprehensive core facility management. The product integrates with lab information workflow systems, providing an administration over workflow layer for end-to-end facility management.