Events on 27 September 2023

Phadia Academy is an online learning platform by Thermo Fisher Scientific aimed at Lab staff primarily BMSes in Immunology Labs. It includes courses for autoimmune diseases, allergy, and our instruments. We would like to have it as a link on the IBMS webpage, as it was in previous years.

IBMS Congress 2023 is an important forum for progressing your professional skills and knowledge, supporting career development and promoting the profession.

Full Hands-on Practical Microtomy Training course.

Microtomy is a skill that requires training and practice. The course is practical and hands-on for anyone who desire to work in histopathology department.

25-27th September 2023
2- 4th October 2023
9-11th October 2023
18-20th October 2023

Develop an understanding of the required equipment used in a modern Mohs laboratory
Understand how to embrace design and automation in a modern Mohs laboratory.
Understand the required skills while they are using automated and advanced equipment in Mohs laboratory.
To be aware how automated and advanced equipment will provide enhanced and more accurate results and improve quality performance.

Delegates will:

Gain an appreciation of the diversity and range of tumour types that can be assessed using Mohs.
Comprehend the complexity of technical requirements to ensure cases are dealt with effectively.
Recognise unusual findings and be able to adjust the investigative procedures in a 'live' setting
Appreciate tumour pattern recognition in Mohs cases

Direct immunofluorescence (DIF) techniques provide the gold standard diagnostic tests for a number of autoimmune immunobullous diseases, including pemphigus and pemphigoid and have clinical utility in other autoantibody-mediated disorders. They are typically performed on unfixed, frozen skin, mucosal and renal biopsies. For optimal diagnostic value, material for DIF requires careful preparation and a number of factors contribute to the quality of the assessed tissue sections. In particular, weak specific fluorescence intensity and high non-specific background fluorescence can hinder accurate interpretation.

This presentation will provide a brief overview of best practice for optimising DIF performance, with a focus on skin and mucosal biopsies. Troubleshooting and helpful tips will be provided covering areas including specimen preparation and the importance of using an appropriate transport medium, rinsing considerations prior to block preparation, factors influencing embedding and cryotomy, protocols for optimising fluorescence and appropriate use of conjugates, imaging considerations for digital pathology solutions, storage of material prior to reporting and best practice strategies for maintaining internal and external quality control, with reference to the NEQAS CPT DIF EQA scheme.

Electron microscopy is essential for the diagnosis of a range of medical renal disorders, and its use is detecting immune deposits and basement membranes changes in native kideny biopsies will be familiar to many biomedical scientists and pathologists. EM is also used in the assessment of renal transplant biopsies.

In cases of recurrent disease the features are similar to those seen in native kidneys, but there are also specific features only seen in the transplant setting. This talk will focus on the utility of EM in renal transplant biopsies, demonstrating examples from relevant cases.

Amyloidosis is disease caused by extracellular deposition in the tissues of abnormal protein in a characteristic fibrillar form known as amyloid. Early and correct diagnosis is essential so that patients benefit from appropriate and timely treatment.

The presentation will highlight the need for rigour in the demonstration of amyloid, new techniques, research, diagnosis and treatment.

This presentation will give delegates attending an:

Overview of the pre-analytical processing pathway and potential risks associated with each stage.
Historical/current/prospective optimisation of the pre-analytical pathway.
Understanding of the near-future perspectives for standardisation-will technologies such image analysis and spatial profiling affect the practice of pathology laboratories.

NGS for molecular profiling of cancer in routine practice.

There is legitimate expectation that molecular profiling of cancers can bring precious information to guide the treatment.

The clinically relevant alterations are of varied types: gene mutations, copy numbers, rearrangements, but also protein levels of expression. Profiling of tumours in routine practice is complex logistically, due to the high number of patients and targets, the small size of the samples and the quick turn around time required. An exhaustive assessment requires a variety of platforms.

Furthermore, it becomes relevant to repeat profiling on tissue and on blood during the patient’s treatment.

Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) offers the possibility of multiplex testing, with high sensitivity and specificity. There are multiple approaches: whole genome sequencing, whole exome sequencing and panels of varied sizes.

In practice, the focus is to concentrate on providing an exhaustive clinically relevant assessment for all patients, which is guided, for each type of tumour, by WHO and NICE or equivalent guidelines.

There has been initially an excess of enthusiasm about what NGS could offer in routine practice; the technology had yet not reached the stage of being implementable within clinical practice without significantly destabilising the management.

However, thanks to significant improvement, including automation of the process, efficient IT and Bioinformatics, NGS is now safely implementable.

Pending a coherent political and funding approach, molecular diagnostic laboratories are able to provide high throughout sequencing of tumours on real life tissue samples and on blood.

It is important to mention that the molecular diagnostic laboratories also need to maintain single gene testing, immunohistochemistry, FISH and to implement artificial intelligence based assays on tissue, which will be essential and complementary to NGS testing.

The results of the molecular profiling will need to be transcribed in a comprehensive, integrated and clinically relevant report.