May 23, 2016 | Diagnostics World News will be attending the Next Generation Diagnostics Summit in Washington, D.C., August 23-26, and we are looking forward to four days filled with diagnostics challenges, solutions, and advances. The Summit includes 13 different conference programs, and here is just some of what we have highlighted.
DNA Forensics
The DNA Forensics program will examine new technologies, changing policies, and trends in forensic DNA investigations, particularly looking at how next-generation sequencing can be brought to bear on forensic investigations.
Speakers from The Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory and law enforcement scientists from Baltimore and Wisconsin will tackle the logistic challenges—library preparation, DNA extraction, and analysis. Taking on the legal questions: Ted R. Hunt, Chief Trial Attorney in Kansas City, Missouri.
We are particularly looking forward to learning more about how DNA analysis is being done in the field, what technical advances could propel law enforcement forward, and how we are safeguarding against error or abuse.
Circulating Tumor Cells
The field of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) offers such astonishing promise, and a program at the Summit will be focused on how we can harness these cells to monitor and diagnose disease.
We are looking forward to hearing Tilak K. Sundaresan, of Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, discuss using CTCs to develop predictive biomarkers; and Daniel Danila, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, relaying his experience validating a biomarker assay for prostate cancer patients.
The closing panel in the program is particularly promising: speakers will discuss the challenges in getting to early detection, detecting low levels of disease, cutting down on false positive testing, and correlating results with disease.
Enabling Point-of-Care Diagnostics
All health is now global health—a point proven by the spreading health effects of the Western diet as much as by disease outbreaks that jump boarders and oceans with ease. Point-of-care diagnostics can truly be life-changing in so many instances.
Rosanna Peeling of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine will give the keynote presentation in this program, highlighting how point-of-care (POC) testing sites can work with diagnostics laboratories to track disease trends and serve as early warning signals.
Other global researchers will discuss how POC diagnostics will change medical treatment, and several talks we’ve flagged will delve into the informatics underpinnings that will make instant diagnoses a reality.
Molecular Diagnostics for Infectious Disease
In a related vein, the diagnostics for infectious disease program will look specifically into the regulatory aspects of getting ID tests through the FDA, as well as the technologies required.
Speakers from CDC, FDA, and NIST will present best practices, regulatory pathways, and standards. These speakers will outline the supporting infrastructure needed to equip public and global health care providers with tools necessary to combat rising threats such as emerging pathogens and antimicrobial resistance.
Tom Slezak of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will present the lab’s pan-microbial microarray, and Thomas M. File, Jr. (Northeast Ohio Medical University) and Debra Goff (The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center) will both present on antimicrobial stewardship.
NGS Diagnostics: Data Considerations, Annotation, and Interpretation
As NGS diagnostics becomes more common, we are looking forward to discussing best practices in NGS data analysis, and NGS results annotation, interpretation, disclosure and applications.
Isaac Kohane (Harvard Medical School) keynotes the program, exploring why precision medicine requires imprecise measurements. Promising diversity of thought from the beginning, Kohane will, illustrate how the focus on the molecular is causing diagnostic and prognostic imprecision, and highlight integrative approaches that address this problem.
From there, Roger D. Klein (Cleveland Clinic) will discuss annotation and interpretation of somatic mutation data; Susan Mockus (The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine) will challenges and solutions for interpreting large genomic panels; and Karen Weck (UNC Chapel Hill) will discuss whole exome sequencing variants.