Mass spectrometry, molecular diagnostics, and genomics highlight this year’s oral abstract presentations at the 70th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo in Chicago. For attendees, this is an opportunity to see a diverse range of topics in a relatively short period of time and hopefully find areas of interest to pursue after the conference, Annual Meeting Organizing Committee (AMOC) abstract coordinator Thomas Daly, MD, medical director of Cleveland Clinic Laboratories, told CLN Stat. Each author will give a 15-minute presentation, followed by a 5-minute Q&A. Poster sessions will also feature all accepted abstracts on July 31 and August 1 from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Choosing the abstracts for this year’s conference involved a rigorous review process. Drawing from more than 1,000 submissions that were scored by a large pool of reviewers, Daly and Mark Cervinski, PhD, director of clinical chemistry at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the other AMOC abstract coordinator, ranked the submissions based on these scores, taking roughly the top 10% to look for potential oral abstracts. “Mark and I then generated the list of the final 30 abstracts that would be invited for oral presentations,” Daly said.
This year’s six themes for the oral abstract session include both technology- and practice-specific topics, offering a broad spectrum of opportunities to showcase interesting work, Daly added. Topics range from early stages of clinical application, such as descriptions of novel technologies/biomarkers, to more immediately applicable topics such as utilization and application of current testing.
Schedule for the oral abstracts
Monday, July 30
Global Health: 10:30 a.m.–noon
Clinical Applications: 2:30–4 p.m.
Tuesday, July 31
Mass Spectrometry: 10:30 a.m.–noon
Molecular Diagnostics and Genomics: 2:30–4 p.m.
Wednesday, August 1
Emerging Biomarkers in Technology: 10:30 a.m.–noon
Hot Topics in Lab Medicine: 2:30–4 p.m.
Daly is especially looking forward to the presentation on “A novel activity-based concept to screen biological matrices for the presence of (synthetic) opioids,” a potential approach for keeping up with constantly evolving testing needs in this area.
“I’m also interested in hearing about Evaluation of Positive Frequency as a Quality Indicator for Assay Performance because I’m a big fan of leveraging the large datasets generated by the clinical laboratory in ways to improve performance,” Daly said.
Don’t miss your chance to see this year’s oral abstract presentations—register today for the 70th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo July 29–August 2 in Chicago.