From clinical chemistry to digital pathology: Read more about how modern medical laboratories and procedures in pathology play a vital role in the detection and prevention of diseases and in medical research.
The Central Laboratory at the Medical University Hanover, Germany, is prepared to handle virtually any clinical chemistry task, from a routine test to the most complex analysis. Equipped with state-of-the-art technology and thanks to a high degree of automation, the team can process more than 3,000 specimens, mostly blood and urine, in a single day. Professor Ralf Lichtinghagen, European…
Hamamatsu and KiKo Knowledge Hub Join Inspirata’s Initiative to Offer Free Remote Pathology Solution for Healthcare Institutions Affected by COVID-19. Inspirata gains strategic support in its initiative to allow pathology departments across the world to offer work-from-home opportunities for their pathologists during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
In diagnostics, it sometimes makes sense to follow your nose. During the Labmed Forum at Medica 2019, Dr Beniam Ghebremedhin and Dr Simona Cristescu discussed the diagnostic potential of breathomics – the analysis of a patient’s exhaled air for disease indicators. The idea that a patient’s breath can aid in the diagnosis of diseases is far from new: In ancient Greece, physicians considered…
In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, Beckman Coulter announced that it is developing assays to identify IgM and IgG antibodies to the coronavirus or SARS-CoV-2. The assays will be designed for use on any of its high-throughput Access family of immunoassay systems, including the Access 2 and DxI series installed globally. Research has shown that after infection with SARS-CoV-2, viral…
Siemens Healthineers announced that its latest critical care testing solution, the RapidPoint 500e Blood Gas Analyzer, has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and is now available in the U.S., Europe and countries requiring the CE mark. The analyzer generates blood gas, electrolyte, metabolite, CO-oximetry, and neonatal bilirubin results, which are used to…
Researchers at the German Red Cross Blood Donor Service in Frankfurt headed by Professor Erhard Seifried, and the Institute for Medical Virology at the University Hospital Frankfurt at Goethe University headed by Professor Sandra Ciesek succeeded in developing a procedure that makes it possible to immediately and dramatically increase worldwide testing capacities for detecting SARS-CoV-2.
French in vitro diagnostics company bioMérieux announced that its subsidiary, BioFire Defense, has received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of its BioFire COVID-19 test for use in CLIA moderate and high complexity clinical laboratories to detect the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. The test detects SARS-CoV-2 in approximately 45 minutes from a…
To provide reliable information about the coronavirus disease COVID-19, Professor Giuseppe Lippi, Director of the Laboratory for Clinical Chemistry and Hematology at the University Hospital of Verona, Italy, gives an overview on the current state of scientific knowledge on COVID-19 and the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The video was provided by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC), who…
Human factor aspects of reprocessing can never be completely avoided yet staff can be empowered to reduce the risk of infection. This was an important conclusion established at a multidisciplinary expert panel held at Pentax Medical’s R&D Center, discussing infection risk mitigation in endoscopy. This panel of experts, consisting of physicians, nurses, microbiologists, infection control…
Biotechnology company bioMérieux, a world leader in the field of in vitro diagnostics, is announcing the forthcoming launch of 3 different tests to address the COVID-19 epidemic and to meet the different needs of physicians and health authorities in the fight against this emerging infectious disease. bioMérieux has finalized the development of the SARS-CoV-2 R-Gene test. This real-time PCR test…
The MiniCollect Capillary Blood Collection System launched by Greiner Bio-One in 2016, has an improved cap on all its blood collection tubes. The new version, designed for easier opening, has an increased number of ridges that are also deeper to improve grip and user comfort. The cap rim also overlaps the top of the tube to augment grip and ease opening. The capillary blood collection tubes offer…
Investigators at Hannover Medical School (MHH) in Germany have developed a molecular assay for detecting the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (previously 2019-nCoV) on the automated Panther Fusion system by Hologic. The preclinical assay is described online in the Journal of Clinical Virology. “Rapid diagnosis is critical to combatting the spread of pandemics, and the Panther Fusion system is well…
The UK and Europe are facing a serious lab skills shortage over the next decade with medical laboratories among the worst affected. An ageing population and skilled operators retiring without being replaced by a new generation of lab technicians is at the core of a critical lack of skilled lab workers, with it taking 5-10 years for a technician to become fully competent and an expert in their…
A simple blood test coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) analysis could help spot the signs of a brain tumour sooner in patients. Brain tumour diagnosis is difficult: patients often see their family doctor (GP) several times before referral for a scan. However, research presented at the 2019 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference in Glasgow last November suggests the…
Liquid biopsy offers a new dimension to detection and stratification of cancer – yet the technique also faces hurdles and challenges in becoming a mainstream diagnostic approach that will help facilitate more personalised treatments. A critical challenge lies in identifying the extremely low concentrations of the bio-analytes of CTC (circulating tumour cells), ctDNA (circulating tumour DNA) and…
Biologists have discovered a way to stop cells from one of the most aggressive types of breast cancer spreading in the lab. The study points towards new avenues of research to combat the devastating disease. The results of the study of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer by the team from the Universities of Manchester, Glasgow and Sheffield and funded by Breast Cancer Now are published in Oncogene.…
Thermo Fisher Scientific and NanoPin Technologies, Inc. have entered into a collaborative relationship to advance blood-based infectious disease detection technology through the development of highly sensitive liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS)-based workflows. Through the detection of disease-related antigens directly from patient blood samples, NanoPin's unique diagnostic platform…
Scientists working across drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics, bioanalytical, pre-clinical and clinical trial applications can now access a range of digital reagent dispensers designed to enable assay miniaturization, boost productivity and improve accuracy of results. Offering enhanced dispensing precision, the new systems use ten times less reagent compared to manual pipetting workflows,…
Scientists from The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne have successfully grown the Wuhan coronavirus (also known as SARS-CoV-2) from a patient sample, which will provide expert international laboratories with crucial information to help combat the virus. This is the first time the virus has been grown in cell culture outside of China. The Royal Melbourne Hospital’s…
Medical imaging IT and cybersecurity company Sectra has signed a digital pathology contract with the Dutch hospital Zuyderland MC. A digital pathology workflow makes it possible to access and share images and information between departments and hospitals. Storing, reviewing and sharing digital pathology images increases efficiency in primary diagnostics and improves cancer care by facilitating…
A team of physicists from McMaster University has developed a process to modify red blood cells so they can be used to distribute drugs throughout the body, which could specifically target infections or treat catastrophic diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer’s. The modified red blood cells are designed to circulate in the body for several weeks at a time, seeking out specific targets including…
The updated guideline for estrogen and progesterone receptor (ER/PgR) testing in breast cancer, published jointly by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), reaffirms much of the original guidance and has more specific recommendations for handling and reporting cases with low ER expression. Globally, more than 1 million women are diagnosed…
A protein newly identified as important in type 1 diabetes can delay onset of the disease in diabetic mice, providing a new target for prevention and treatment in people, according to research led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Indiana University School of Medicine. Because type 1 diabetes is incurable and has serious lifelong health…
A preliminary study has found that when young, healthy men were deprived of just one night of sleep, they had higher levels of tau, a biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease, in their blood than when they had a full, uninterrupted night of rest. The study is published in the January 8, 2020, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Tau is a protein found in…
The advent of digital pathology is helping to address some of the challenges surrounding tissue microarrays as they are integrated into the digital workflow, in some ways giving them ‘a new lease of life’, according to Professor Inti Zlobec, who spoke at the Digital Pathology and AI Congress in London last December. As Head of the Translational Research Unit at the Institute of Pathology,…
