2026 Life Sciences Conferences: Align Summit, SITC EU, and Cell-Cell Symposium

MassBio has announced that its annual partnering conference, the Align Summit, will return on October 15, 2026, at the Sheraton Boston Hotel, connecting funders with 50+ pre-seed to Series B startups. Attendees will experience presentations from these startups, expert commentary, and one-on-one partnering meetings, leaving with the latest industry intelligence and a competitive roadmap for the year ahead. The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer has also announced a panel discussion, 'Pre-Clinical Models,' at the 2026 SITC EU Immuno-Oncology Drug Development Summit, while UCLA Health’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center will hold the Cell-Cell Symposium 2026 on March 19.

The Align Summit’s application for presenters is open now through July 31, 2026, at 12:00 PM (noon) ET. The 2026 presentation tracks include Advanced Biologics & Protein Therapeutics, AI for Drug Discovery & Development, Diagnostics & Biomarkers, Engineered Molecular Medicines, and Next-Generation Genetic Technologies. The Main Stage will feature two dynamic panels and an essential policy briefing: '2027 Pharma Lookahead' with senior pharma business development leaders on what they are buying and how patent cliffs and a tighter exit environment are reshaping deals; 'Washington and Your Portfolio,' a policy briefing on capital formation, drug approval, research funding, and IP; and 'Regulators on the Record' with SEC and NCI officials and a former FDA official on shifting priorities. The exit environment is tighter and the policy landscape is in flux, and the Align Summit is designed to give funders a direct line to the innovators, the science, and the strategy shaping their next move. Funders can request complimentary registration, startups can request discounted registration, and general admission is open now.

At the SITC EU Immuno-Oncology Drug Development Summit, the panel discussion on pre-clinical models will provide insight from industry leaders on what’s working – and what’s changing – in translational research, with registration open.

Now in its second year, the Cell-Cell Symposium 2026 brings together experimental biologists, bioinformaticians, and technology developers working to understand how cells interact and communicate in real biological systems. The meeting addresses a major bottleneck: dissociated single-cell measurements are difficult to connect back to spatial context in a way that is quantitative, reproducible, and biologically actionable, particularly when linking gene programs to functional influence on neighboring cells. The symposium highlights emerging experimental platforms and computational approaches that connect single-cell and spatial data to predictive models of cell-cell function and response to perturbation. It emphasizes scalable datasets and integrative methods that enable downstream applications including AI-driven drug discovery, predictive models of cell state and cell-cell interaction, and virtual cell and tissue frameworks for in silico perturbation and simulation.