The 13th edition of the European Congress on Biotechnology, titled Symbiosis 2007, will be held at Barcelona from September 16-19, 2007 with the theme science, industry and society. The proposed congress is expected to bring together leading biotechnologists from around the world to analyse the impact of life sciences industry in addressing humanity's great challenges.

The congress is being organised by European Federation of Biotechnology with the support of the European Commission. The event is expected to attract over 1,500 leading scientists and other senior participants.

"Symbiosis 2007 will focus on many of Europe and the world's leading scientists on addressing the great challenges to society," said Mathias Uhlen, chairman of the scientific programme committee. The event will be an ideal platform to stimulate the debate on how biotechnology can help to address the most critical health, environmental and nutritional challenges of humanity,' he added.

The congress will also explore the ways how biotechnology can contribute to address chronic diseases in the developing world, how can it improve the development of new innovative and targeted medicines, the potential of biofuels, the importance of biotechnology for biodiversity and dozens of other topics in the fields of health, industrial biotechnology, green biotechnology, functional genomics, science, industry and society, the organiser said.