RECENT NEWS

Mettler Toledo’s Rainin pipettes and TerraRack pipette tip racks are helping PhD students in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biomedicine at the University of Barcelona to study metabolic syndrome. Laia Oliva Lorenzo explained: “Our research involves the study of metabolic syndrome at the cellular, tissue and organism level, looking at the cellular metabolism – particularly adipocytes – of rats, and the effects of different diets and obesity. We analyse plasma and tissue samples, and carry out primary adipocyte culture and stromal cell tests.”

Royal Philips and LabPON, the first clinical laboratory to move to 100% histopathology digital diagnosis, plans to create a digital database of massive aggregated sets of annotated pathology images and big data, utilising Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution. The database will provide pathologists with a wealth of clinical information for the development of image analytics algorithms for computational pathology and pathology education, while promoting research and discovery to develop new insights for disease assessment, including cancer.

Elkerliek Hospital in The Netherlands and Royal Philips have announced a collaboration to pioneer the use of point-of-care testing (POCT) in the hospital’s dedicated cardiac emergency department. As a key part of the collaboration, Philips’ CE-marked cardiac troponin I (cTnI) blood test for the rapid diagnosis of heart attack, which is based on the company’s Minicare I-20 handheld diagnostics platform, will be used to provide test results within 10 minutes using only a single fingerprick drop of blood.

To design the laboratory of the future you need pioneering and innovative thinkers and developers from research and industry. Scientists and businesses joined together for the smartLAB project to develop a vision of the laboratory of the future. The second edition of this fully functional model laboratory will be on display at LABVOLUTION with BIOTECHNICA, on 16–18 May.

EKF Diagnostics, a global in vitro diagnostics company, has announced that, in a recently published paper (Lenters-Westra E, English, E. Understanding the use of sigma metrics in hemoglobin A1c analysis. Clin Lab Med 2017; 37: 57–71.) its Quo-Test point-of-care (POC) haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) analyser has been confirmed as meeting International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) performance criteria. Using sigma-metrics data modelling, scientists from the European Reference Laboratory for Glycohemoglobin, demonstrated that Quo-Test easily met IFCC accepted quality targets of >2 sigma at 10% total allowable error (TAE) at 48 mmol/mol HbA1c. This is essential for the effective monitoring of glycaemic control in diabetes patients.

The Binding Site Group has entered a collaboration agreement with Mayo Clinic to develop a novel clinical laboratory test for the identification and accurate measurement of monoclonal proteins present in B-cell diseases. The two organisations want to improve the testing, diagnosis and monitoring of patients with multiple myeloma and related conditions.

Measurement uncertainty in the context of clinical laboratories is inextricably linked to imprecision, and therefore the assessment of this poorly understood factor is an increasing element of the accreditation process. In view of the need to provide some clarity, Pathology in Practice is running a series of articles written by Stephen MacDonald.

Last year the Francis Crick Institute moved into a brand new building in central London, bringing together 1500 scientists and support staff working collaboratively across disciplines, making it the largest biomedical research facility in Europe under a single roof. As the Francis Crick Institute is a biomedical discovery institute dedicated to understanding the fundamental biology underlying health and disease, it is vital that it has very reliable and secure freezers to enable it to undertake its research effectively and safely.

The British Society for Microbial Technology (BSMT) is offering an excellent programme for its annual scientific conference, to be held on Friday, 14 May 2017 in London. This year, the relevance of microbiology to the clinician and life-threatening clinical infections will be explored in Hot Topics in Microbiology – Join the Grapevine.

World Parkinson’s Disease Day (11 April) is held every year on Parkinson’s birthday to raise awareness of the eponymous disease and the research being done to alleviate the condition. To mark 200 years since James Parkinson first identified the condition, a new biography of this forgotten man will be published.

A range of clinical trials aimed at developing new treatments for pancreatic cancer will get underway after a £10 million investment from Cancer Research UK. The investment will support the PRECISION Panc project, which aims to develop personalised treatments for pancreatic cancer patients, improving the options and outcomes for a disease in which survival rates have remained stubbornly low.

Researchers have generated the first immortalised cell lines that allow more-efficient manufacture of red blood cells. The results, published in Nature Communications (Trakarnsanga K, Griffiths RE, Wilson MC et al. An immortalized adult human erythroid line facilitates sustainable and scalable generation of functional red cells. Nat Commun 2017 Mar 14; 8: 14750. doi: 10.1038/ncomms14750) could, if successfully tested in clinical trials, lead to a safe source of transfusions for people with rare blood types, and in areas of the world where blood supplies are inadequate or unsafe.

Professor Andrew Morris has been appointed director of the new UK health and biomedical informatics research institute, which is to be named Health Data Research UK (HDR UK). The new institute will, for the first time, incorporate on a national scale the entire breadth of data science research aimed at improving human health.

Ranjit Rai is probably the longest serving and most widely travelled laboratory autoclave service engineer working out of Britain. He joined Priorclave within months of its formation, building autoclaves before becoming the company’s only service engineer providing customer support across the UK. Shortly after his appointment as service manager, Ranjit celebrated 25 years with the company.

It lives inside one-third of the UK population and is a common infection in cats; however, scientists previously knew little about how the Toxoplasma parasite communicated with its host. Now, new research by the University of Glasgow’s Wellcome Centre for Molecular Parasitology, in collaboration with The University of Vermont, has revealed how the parasite uses a key protein to form a communication network and ultimately continue the infection process.

A recent time and motion study by University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust has demonstrated a 1.5 minute (>20%) reduction in time to blood gas results when using the Proxima bedside blood gas monitoring system from Sphere Medical. The results were presented at the British Association of Critical Care Nurses conference and Intensive Care Society State of the Art meeting as a scientific poster.

An educational board game to help improve team performance in health and social care organisations has been developed by Focus Games in collaboration with NHS Lothian.

Arquer Diagnostics, the developer of a high-sensitivity, high-specificity, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)-based urine test for bladder cancer, has recruited 801 patients for a clinical trial to evaluate the company’s MCM5 bladder cancer diagnostics test. The results from the study will be used as part of the company’s application for CE mark approval, ahead of the commercial launch of the MCM5 ELISA planned for later in the year.

Globally recognised as a symbol of design excellence, the iF design awards celebrate the best in user-focused, ergonomic and efficient design. With over 5000 submissions from 70 countries, Olympus Scientific Solutions has received two of these prestigious awards for its CX23 upright microscope and FLUOVIEW FV3000 confocal laser scanning microscope.

The rise of antibiotic resistance is at the heart of a new BBC drama, written by Val McDermid and shaped by scientific expertise from the University of Warwick. Airing on BBC Radio 4 this month (3, 10 and 17 March, 2.15 pm), Resistance is a three-part story about an epidemic of a drug-resistant disease.