The Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine (JALM) at the 69th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo plans an exciting lineup of hot topics: AACC’s universal sample bank, lipoprotein biomarkers as a risk predictor for heart disease, a unique mass spectrometry method to measure the anti-malarial medication, Atovaquone, and the results of a comprehensive study on cardiac troponin (cTn) assays.
The Aug. 2 morning symposium, Relevant, Practical and Novel Topics from the Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine (34121) is worth 1.5 CE hours.
JALM’s objective is to publish translational and pragmatic research: “well-done science” that can be applied in laboratory medicine, immediately or eventually, over the next 5 years or so. For the hot topics session, the editors chose research papers of interest to the journal’s audience that they felt should be highlighted at the Annual Scientific Meeting, JALM editor-in-chief Rob Christenson, the session’s moderator and professor of pathology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told CLN Stat.
This year, JALM is experimenting with a TED Talks format to engage the audience, Christenson said. “We’ll have four talks in an hour and a half, in which each speaker will present about 20 slides and make three or four points in 20 minute presentations.” TED Talks and TED Conferences aim to spread a broad range of ideas—especially technology, entertainment, and design—via short, powerful talks.
Each JALM hot topics presentation will have about 5 minutes for questions. After the session is over, the speakers will reconvene at the AACC booth in the exhibit hall (3539) to give audience members an opportunity to chat with them in person, according to Christenson.
Three of the four sessions address cardiovascular testing. Paramjit Sandhu, MPH, MD, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will present one of these talks. She plans to discuss best lab practices relating to lipoprotein biomarkers and the risk of cardiovascular disease, “a particularly valuable paper in that it asks, acquires, assesses, and analyzes the evidence for this topic in a systematic way,” Christenson said.
Christenson will be discussing the ASSESS Trial, which compared 13 commercially available cTn assays—both contemporary and high-sensitivity—in a common cohort of samples. He’ll describe the assays, how they agree, and how ASSESS data might be used to set practical, productive expectations for cTn testing.
Another speaker will highlight AACC’s establishment of a sample bank to determine the 99th percentile for cTn assays. Alan Wu, PhD, professor of laboratory medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and chief of clinical chemistry at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center will talk about the bank’s characteristics, contributions to date, and how it might assist in –harmonizing data, Christenson said.
Switching over to the topic of anti-malarial drugs, Allison Chambliss, PhD, assistant professor clinical pathology at Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California, will describe an ultraperformance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry method to quantify Atovaquone in human plasma and its possible contribution in aiding treatment of this disease. “It’s an innovative way to measure this drug, and the method may have uses for guiding treatment of other diseases as well,” said Christenson.
Don’t miss out on JALM’s hot topics session: Register now for the 69th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo July 30-Aug. 3 in San Diego.