RECENT NEWS

Institute Fellow Dr Mustafa A Abu-Lisan has been appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Greater London in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. Dr Abu-Lisan was appointed to the post by Her Majesty's Lord Lieutenant of Greater London, Kenneth Olisa.

Frances Hughes and Claire Swift, both senior biomedical scientists in molecular pathology, are part of the team at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust which won the award for Improving Quality and Efficiency through Workforce Transformation, for their work on the Molecular Pathology Diagnostic Service.

Mast will be exhibiting again at the BSMT Spring Meeting, to be held at Public Health England, Colindale, on Friday, 20 May 2016. The one-day symposium ‘Assessing the Impact of New Technology in Diagnostics on Global Epidemiology: How Laboratories Make a Difference’, will discuss how laboratories identify and quantify infectious disease globally and how advances in technology has permitted more accurate reporting.

Ceftaroline (Zinforo), manufactured by AstraZeneca, is a novel cephalosporin used in the treatment of skin and soft tissue infections. It has also been used successfully in the treatment of complicated skin infections.

Abbott’sARCHITECT STATHigh Sensitive Troponin-I (hsTnI) test may help clinicians detect twice as many cases of myocardial infarction (MI) in women. Results have shown that the test is able todiagnose an MI in 22% of cases for women compared to a standard of 11% when usinga gender-specific threshold (an approach to setting diagnostic thresholds which tailors treatment andtest thresholds by gender).

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A blood test may be able to provide early warning that patients with advanced melanoma skin cancer are relapsing, according to a study published recently in Cancer Discovery(Girotti MR, Gremel G, Lee R et al. Application of sequencing, liquid biopsies and patient-derived xenografts for personalized medicine in melanoma.Cancer Discov 2015 Dec 29. Pii: CD-15-1336 [Epub ahead of print]).

From its headquarters in Crumlin, Northern Ireland, Randox has grown into an international success story, at the frontline of improving healthcare in conditions such as stroke, dementia, diabetes, heart disease, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and respiratory infections through earlier and more accurate diagnosis.

The IBMS has published updated guidance on Patient Sample and Request Form Identification Criteria. The updated policy defines the minimum criteria that must be in place for the receipt and identification of samples.

IBMS President Ian Sturdgess joined the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, MPs and scientists in Parliament recently to present the Silver Award in Biological and Biomedical Sciences at SET for Britain 2016.

New data from four studies demonstrate that post-prandial hyperglycaemia is associated with a negative physical and emotional impact on people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, greater use of healthcare resources, missed work time and reduced productivity. These results were presented recently at the World Diabetes Congress of the International Diabetes Federation.

Dr David Bennett, former head of NHS Foundation Trust regulator Monitor, has been appointed the new Chair of Viapath, the pathology joint venture owned by Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital and Serco.

An international team of scientists has reported important results using patients' own immune cells to fight cancer. In one trial, symptoms disappeared in 94% of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. In other types of blood cancer, response rates over 80% have been reported, and over half experienced complete remission.

www.nih.gov

An Introduction to Clinical Anaerobic Bacteriology is a special guide that enables readers to isolate and identify 12 commonly occurring, clinically important anaerobic bacteria. Don Whitley Scientific is offering UK-based readers a free copy of the Library Edition of this publication. To apply for your free copy, please email the company or log on to its website and complete the contact form.

Rainin TerraRack pipette tip racks have achieved success in last year’s Green Apple Awards. The judges recognised the environmental benefits of this product range – which is designed to minimise the problem of plastic tip rack waste – selecting TerraRack from a field of more than 500 entries to receive a Bronze Award for Environmental Best Practice. The award was presented to EU market manager Ian Eaton-Taylor at a ceremony held at the Houses of Parliament last November.

An internationally renowned gene therapy research team has won a $200,000 CytoFLEX flow cytometer from Beckman Coulter Life Sciences. The contest was designed to explore innovative research solutions involving flow cytometry. The winning team, headed by Dr Martin Pulé, is from the UCL Cancer Institute at University College London.

Neil Bentley, head of Specialist Microbiology Technical Services at Public Health England (PHE), has been awarded an OBE for Services to Public Health in the New Year's Honours, which is well-deserved recognition of his contribution to public health in the UK and overseas.

A study undertaken in Sweden has shown that a new test for prostate cancer is better at detecting aggressive cancer than prostate-specific antigen (PSA). The new test, which has undergone trial in 58,818 men, discovered aggressive cancer earlier and reduced the number of false-positive tests and unnecessary biopsies. The results were published recently in the The Lancet Oncology.

An international collaboration of scientists has revealed the molecular function of a protein essential for replication of H5N1 influenza virus. A subdomain of the viral polymerase undergoes large-scale structural reorganisation to enable an essential part of the polymerase to enter the nucleus of the infected cell, where the viral genome is replicated.

Beckman Coulter Diagnostics has made available Issue 4 of its DxN VERIS Molecular Diagnostics Evidence Pack. Following presentation of eight new scientific posters at the European Societyfor Clinical Virology meeting in Edinburgh, the Evidence Pack has been updated and now contains more than 20 evaluation posters presented at key infectious disease meetings across Europe.

Menarini has announced the placement of its 50th sediMAX analyser into the UK and Irish market. The success of this innovative urine analyser has been largely down to the technology employed, which has moved away from the flow cell-based systems previously available.