Welcome to
the 29th ESACT MEETING

Looking forward to the ESACT MEETING 2026

50 Years of Progress – and still going ➤ beyond

Dear members of the ESACT community!

It is a great pleasure for me to be organizing another ESACT MEETING in 2026 – and this one at a date that is really worth celebrating:

In 1976, half a century ago, the first ESACT MEETING took place in Amsterdam, coordinated by Simon Barteling. At the time, the focus was on overcoming obstacles in media formulations and culture conditions, dominated by first attempts at scaling up and early products which were yet focused on vaccines and natively secreted interferon – just to pinpoint that this took place before the time of hybridoma technology or recombinant protein technology.

Since then, with the advent of recombinant protein production in mammalian cells at large, industrial scale, and the emergence of cell therapies and – just now taking the step towards manufacturing scale, gene therapies, the technology and our Society have developed into a well established research area and industry. Animal cell technology today generates scientific breakthroughs in understanding biological process, leads to new therapies that benefit millions of people every year and produces revenues in the billions of euros annually.

During this time, our meetings have developed into a well appreciated communication platform that allows members of academia, the manufacturing industry and technology providers to come together and exchange ideas and information on their newest discoveries as well as the challenges they face so as to further drive forward this useful technology. In this spirit, the ESACT MEETING 2026 aims to again provide an environment that fosters the formation of new contacts, the meeting of old friends, getting up to date on a broad range of developments and just having fun and a good time 😉

I look forward to welcoming you in Salzburg.

With kind regards

Nicole Borth
Chair of ESACT
Chair of the ESACT MEETING 2026