Skyline at the EHA 2011 Exhibition

Skyline Diagnostics at the EHA 2011 Exhibition

Highlights

From June 9 to June 12 the 16th Annual Congress of the European Hematology Association took place at the London ExCel Exhibition and Convention Centre. A number of 8670 delegates in total attended the congress and exhibition.

Skyline was well presented with a large team and booth for the first time after CE registration in March of this year. There was a lot of interest for the AMLprofiler and the company from hematologists, laboratories and industrial partners. Dr Erik van Beers was invited to present the AML validation results. We were honored as only 8% of the people that submitted an abstract were requested to present during plenary sessions (approximately 400 people in the session). These sessions allow for maximum exposure on a respected level.

 Day to day

One of our Skyline Diagnostics team members went to London one day in advance to make sure that the booth was ready to run. Late in the afternoon on June 9th the rest of the team arrived and we all headed to the hotel for a briefing of our mission - which was to present Skyline Diagnostics’ AMLprofiler.

At the top is a picture of the booth we put up to get our message across, which is that we developed a great product we believe in! We felt well prepared and had lined up quite a number of appointments with potential.

The congress started on Thursday June 9th with the scientific program. From the start, the number of delegates visiting our booth was higher than expected, even though the official opening of the exhibition would be on Friday June 10th. It was busiest at the exhibition stands between the scientific session intervals. It remained busy at our booth with interested people - wanting to find out what the AMLprofiler is and to learn more about Skyline Diagnostics.

Professor Löwenberg, Chief Scientific Officer of Skyline Diagnostics, was presented with a Lifetime Achievement award. Also, professor Löwenberg gave a presentation at the EHA titled “‘Guiding Treatment By Molecular Diagnostics” View his presentation here, you do have to be registered to be able to watch it.

On Saturday June 11th at 8 am Erik van Beers, our Manager Science & Technology, presented an oral presentation entitled “A validated, microarray based, in-vitro diagnostic assay for adult AML patients”. During his presentation, Erik gave an overview of the many aspects involved in development of the AMLprofiler as a CE IVD. Results demonstrating robustness, bone marrow stability and excellent assay reproducibility across 4 independent laboratories were presented. In addition, results of the clinical validation were highlighted. Other facets of development were also mentioned such as chip stability and reagent bridging. Click here to open his presentation.

At one time an employee of a laboratory from Poland was ordered to get Erik on the phone to speak with the head of the laboratory. As it was quite noisy on the exhibition floor making phonecalls wasn’t always easy.

At the end of each day there were Poster presentations. Annemieke Leunis of the institute of Medical Technology Assessment (iMTA) institute, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, studies the implication of the AMLprofiler on healthcare costs and practice, and quality of life. She presented her poster ‘Cost Effectiveness Of A New Diagnostic Test That Identifies New Prognostic Subtypes in Acute Myeloid Leukemia’. According to Annemieke, “it was great to present this work at the EHA. Several people were interested in this research topic, because it adds another dimensions to all the research performed in identifying new subtypes of AML. My research shows the implications of identifying new subtypes for patients and society.” She also said that “according to the preliminary analysis, it is expected that the identification of favorable subtypes leads to a small improvement in health and a cost reduction. The identification of unfavorable subtypes will improve health, but will also cost more.”  

Sunday June 12th, the exhibition would end at 14.00 pm. The Skyline Diagnostics Team was tired but very satisfied with the successful event. While everybody else returned to base, Marlisa continued her mission and would travel to another congress, taking place in Sheffield, where results of a pilot study with the AMLprofiler would be presented. More news on this will follow shortly.