Who is ELRIG? From Networking Group to Leading Not-for-Profit Scientific Association
- Nicole Brooks
- Mar 20
- 6 min read
From a networking group for robotics to a leading not-for-profit scientific organisation dedicated to uplifting the life science and drug discovery community.
Table of Contents
What is ELRIG and why does it exist?
ELRIG is a scientific association that predominantly organises science conferences. It has become a hub for the drug discovery community, from academics to commercial partners and medicine developers, all with a mission to foster open access to modern research and innovation.
As a company in the centre of the rapidly changing landscape of drug discovery, including cell and gene therapies, AI in medicine development, and the emerging geographies, we spoke with Sanj Kumar, the CEO of ELRIG ahead of its Cell and Gene Therapy 2026 event in Cambridge to understand how ELRIG began, how it’s evolved, and its hope for the future of drug discovery innovation.
How did ELRIG begin?
ELRIG started as a networking community dedicated to laboratory robotics in drug discovery, specifically in pharmaceuticals research companies and for high-throughput screening.
But the story is fascinating…
ELRIG began 25 years ago when laboratory processes stopped being cottage industries due to the emergence of laboratory automations. This involved integrating technology, robotics, and software to execute repetitive, high-throughput, or high-stakes laboratory tasks with minimal human intervention. People realised that if they could automate laboratory processes, they could achieve higher-quality data at lower cost and improve work efficiency.
Why was this important in drug discovery laboratories?
As science scaled up, labs had to screen many test compounds against potential therapeutic targets to produce new medicines. To do this required a high-throughput screening; therefore, laboratory automation became a necessity. Pharmaceutical companies searched for possible automation solutions, which resulted in engineering companies producing automation platforms to enable this mechanisation.
As lab automation began to grow and spread into laboratories, a network of people in these laboratories and other collaborators emerged to discuss the best possible solutions available to develop the automation needed for therapeutic discovery.
Thus, the Laboratory Robotics Interest Group (LRIG) was formed in North America.
Innovation follows innovation, and good science comes from curiosity and the sharing of ideas. So, across the pond, these networking groups also emerged in Europe and the UK, leading to the formation of the European Laboratory Robotics Interest Group which became ELRIG.
How has ELRIG evolved?
If you look at ELRIG now, you wouldn’t imagine that this global organisation started as a laboratory robotics interest group, and it speaks to ELRIG’s ability to evolve with the ever-growing drug discovery landscape.
ELRIG began developing small, volunteer-led conferences to follow the growing variety in tools and applications in drug discovery laboratories. The tools that were being used and being marketed evolved and ELRIG expanded its focus from robotics to reagents. As with the robotics automation evolution so came the evolution of reagents, particularly in high-throughput screening, to help validate potential active ingredients and confirm the potential of drug targets.
As the gamut of instruments and tools being used to develop new drugs evolved, so too did the vision of ELRIG as a place for bringing together a broader network of collaborators and tools providers working in drug discovery. This resulted in ELRIG adding the tagline, ‘the drug discovery community’.
When we asked Sanj how ELRIG evolved, he told us simply that ELRIG evolved because the drug discovery industry grew. And when we look at the ecosystem of medicine development, the evolution is astounding:
CRISPR technology has taken bacteria and repurposed them to correct faulty genes
Gene addition can supply a healthy gene copy using synthetic constructs to the missing or broken genes
Innovative delivery systems borrowed viral vectors from viruses and lipid nanoparticles to deliver gene-editing or gene addition constructs to cells
Cell engineering (immune cells, antibodies and CAR-T cells) reprogrammes immune cells, turning them into precision weapons against diseases, including cancer and autoimmune diseases.
So ELRIG evolved, too; from a volunteer-led, not-for-profit community to a leading hub for the life sciences community to come together.
What challenges has ELRIG faced?
With an organisation lasting a quarter of a century, there must have been hurdles to overcome. When we asked Sanj about the challenges ELRIG has faced, the answer still lay in growth. The growth in drug discovery innovation and the life science community came with ELRIG’s need to grow internally to continue to meet the industry where it is needed.
Sanj explained that the key challenge of ELRIG’s growth came with the need to build the infrastructure to maintain that growth. Growth to a conference organisation like ELRIG naturally means organising and producing more conferences to continue to support the life science community.
But organising more conferences needs more speakers; it needs more delegates attending; it needs expansive marketing to attract the community, and ultimately, it needs more funding.
But as one of the most unique things about ELRIG is that it maintains a free-to-attend policy, to host these conferences, ELRIG decided to offer suppliers sponsorship to fund the events.
The challenge of infrastructure also came from within. For the majority of its existence, ELRIG was a volunteer-led not-for-profit organisation, but to meet the growing demands of the industry, ELRIG had to change. This resulted in Sanj’s appointment as CEO and the addition of a team of employed staff.
The result?
A leading European not-for-profit organisation that brings together a community of over 22,000 life science professionals from academia and biopharma.
What makes ELRIG’s events unique?
In Sanj’s words, “I’m really proud that we have stuck to our ethos
to have our meetings free to attend. Full stop.”
This cannot be understated because ELRIG hosts events like Drug Discovery and Cell and Gene Therapy, which host upwards of 5000 delegates each year, and does not charge a penny for attendees. It is something to be proud of.
Why does ELRIG maintain this position of free-to-attend events?
Sanj told us that it is about providing value to the drug discovery community. Enough value that delegates continue to flock to ELRIG’s events, listen to talks from experts in life sciences, host speakers who can add their involvement to their CVs and offer sponsors the chance to grow their businesses from paying to showcase their services at ELRIG events to potential clients and customers.
In Sanj’s words, “I’m proud that despite having one of the most challenging visions to run conferences free of charge, we’ve stuck to that. And we’ve managed to it because we create value for everyone who is involved with us.”
How does ELRIG support Early Career Professionals?
If you ever attended an ELRIG event, then you know it is a thriving, inspiring, and buzzing environment, where everyone is invited to the conversation, from academia to industry, from PhD students to CEOs, from volunteers to professionals.
Everyone is involved. And that can be tricky.
To overcome the challenge of involving Early Career Professionals (ECPs), ELRIG has a volunteer work group dedicated to ECPs to shape their experience. This means thinking about things such as:
Speaker lineups representing the audience
Free transport shuttles to remote campus locations
Travel bursaries to create accessibility equity
Together, the ELRIG team wants everyone to feel welcome and to gain value.
ELRIG’s mission for drug discovery and pharmaceutical innovation
“Our mission now is to provide the best quality science that we can, on an open-access basis, to the drug discovery community.”
And when we asked what ELRIG’s mission will be in five to ten years, the answer was the same.
However, Sanj highlighted that although the mission will remain unchanged, the science and the community will continue to evolve. And although what ELRIG does in five years will evolve, the vision will not.
A real-world example of this in practice comes at this year’s Cell and Gene Therapy event in March 2026. ELRIG will host a parent’s perspective on their journey after their son was diagnosed with spinal cord muscular atrophy (or SMA), a devastating condition caused by a single faulty gene. If the child had been born six years ago, his only option would have been palliative care. However, through the innovation of cell and gene therapies, scientists have developed a gene therapy designed to replace the missing gene. This case study not only showcases how fast science is moving but also how cell and gene therapies are rewriting medicine.
This also speaks to the enduring legacy of ELRIG as an organisation that evolves organically to match the pace of drug discovery evolution, but with the same north star it began with.
Final thoughts on ELRIG
We ended the interview with one question: “What question do you wish people asked you about ELRIG?”
And the answer Sanj gave was simple: “I wish people asked what they can do to help”.
Sanj told us that just because ELRIG is thriving now, doesn’t mean there isn’t room to grow. The drug discovery industry is multifaceted, and ELRIG wants to hear about it because everybody can bring something different to the table. Whether it’s space medicine or specialising in drug discovery in South Korea.
Any opportunity to bring a new idea is welcomed.
If that answer doesn’t encompass the value of ELRIG that has lasted 25 years, we don’t know what does.
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