It’s an exciting time to be in emerging clinical diagnostics. In as early as 5 years, some of the technologies highlighted at AACC’s Emerging Clinical & Laboratory Diagnostics in the Healthcare Ecosystem Conference could become available for commercial use in clinical laboratories.

This conference, with a long track record of presenting new analytical techniques and enabling technologies, will take place November 9–10 in San Diego and offers 14 ACCENT credits. Next-generation sequencing, liquid biopsy, and novel microbiome therapies represent the broad range of topics this year’s meeting will cover.

The conference’s organizing committee “designed a program that gives clinical laboratorians and other health professionals a chance to review the advances of emerging technologies in diagnostic tools and provides bioengineers with an arena to display and discuss their research,” conference chair Vincent Ricchiuti, PhD, told CLN Stat.

Ricchiuti’s colleagues on the organizing committee include:

  • Gerard Cangelosi, PhD, professor of environmental and occupational health sciences, adjunct professor of epidemiology and global health, University of Washington;
  • Lance Ladic, PhD, director, strategy and innovation, Siemens Healthcare;
  • Sunitha Nagrath, PhD, assistant professor, chemical engineering, University of Michigan; and
  • Angelika Niemz, PhD, Arnold and Mabel Beckman professor and director of research, Keck Graduate Institute

Selected speakers and topics offer great diversity in the field of emerging technologies and translational medicine: from academia to industry, and from bench to bedside, said Ricchiuti, laboratory director and discipline director for immunology at LabCorp’s North-Central Regional Reference Laboratory in Dublin, Ohio.

This year’s theme highlights the critical role that diagnostic technology plays in the healthcare ecosystem, he emphasized. Right now, diagnostics are guiding most aspects of clinical care and will be a key enabler for precision medicine in the future, Ricchiuti said.

Session talks will feature cutting edge applications of next-generation sequencing, liquid biopsy, mass spectrometry, and big data analytics, and explore the connection between these new technologies and clinical practice.

As conference chair and as a clinical scientist, Ricchiuti said he’s looking forward to hearing and discussing all of the sessions.

The keynote presentation by Lynn Bry, MD, PhD, who directs the Massachusetts Host-Microbiome Center at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, will illuminate an area of science ripe with discovery. The Host-Microbiome Center has supported more than 70 groups internationally, studying host-microbiota interactions in health and disease.

Bry’s own research involves the dynamic interactions among host, pathogen, and commensal communities. “Her group has engineered defined microbiota for use as human therapeutics to promote immunomodulation in vivo and to leverage microbiome markers, including molecular and metabolite signatures, to predict patient outcomes for different disease states,” according to Ricchiuti.

In her keynote address, Bry plans to discuss novel microbiome therapies and applications in diagnostic medicine.

Experts in the fields of laboratory science, IVD, research and technology development, bioengineering and venture capital all will find content at the conference that parallels their professional interests. “This is a great opportunity for networking with researchers and industry scientists in a very relaxed and collegial environment,” Ricchiuti said.

Participants will leave the conference able to:

1. Recognize opportunities for collaboration with scientists from nonclinical settings in the development of advanced diagnostic tools;

2. Understand the role of translational medicine in healthcare;

3. Use precepts of translational medicine to optimize patient care when planning lab expansion/evolution; and

4. Outline and predict the evolution of next-generation clinical laboratory platforms and applications.

AACC’s Emerging Clinical & Laboratory Diagnostics in the Healthcare Ecosystem Conference is supported through a grant from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, which supports research in the chemistry and life sciences. Register now to earn 14 ACCENT credits.