UKMedLab2023 conference – A celebration of 70 years of the ACB

UKMedLab23, hosted by the Association for Clinical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine (ACB), was held at the Royal Armouries, Leeds, between the 10th and 12th June 2023.

This year the conference celebrated 70 years of the ACB. With this in mind, and to celebrate the work and contribution of all members, each region was invited to host a parallel session at the National Meeting. All nine ACB regions accepted the invitation with enthusiasm and vigour and planned sessions showcasing the varied specialisms across the UK and Republic of Ireland. There was also a parallel session focused on the current challenges in POCT, on the top of the highly popular interactive case sessions, the Medal Award presentations and the Impact, Foundation and International plenary lectures, a special 70th anniversary President’s address and a number of industry-sponsored workshops.

The sun shone and the conversation flowed, with 341 delegates, there was a real buzz about the conference venue as colleagues caught up with peers and discussed the latest advances in the field.

Following the success of last year, an ACB Microbiology training day was again held alongside the Biochemistry training day. The morning was a shared programme on management topics and scenarios and in the afternoon split discipline-specific sessions were held. The training day attracted 34 microbiology delegates and 119 biochemistry delegates, which was an increase for both cohorts from the previous year. It was wonderful to see so many colleagues in training coming together and building their networks.

The meeting was opened by Bernie Croal, before the programme commenced with the International Lecture. This was presented by Maria Fitzgibbon on lessons in Chemistry, with a focus on the use and evidence for biomarkers of inflammation in cardiovascular and other diseases. This was a great example of how research can be fostered and flourished in a supportive environment with a group of collaborating scientists.

A number of high-quality submissions were received for the Impact Award, and this year’s worthy winner was Tim MacDonald for the work that he and his team completed on the development of a national home finger-prick blood laboratory testing service for clinicians of Paediatric Highly Specialist Services for Complex Conditions. This inspiring talk gave the audience an idea of what is possible when teams work together to improve patient outcome and the future possibilities of home blood sampling.

Following a successful change to the nomination process for the Foundation Award, more nominations were received than ever before, and it was a really difficult decision for the judging panel. This year’s winner was Paul Collinson, who gave a detailed insight into the evolution of cardiac biomarkers from the first ECGs and the use of WBC, ESR and CRP to the measurement of troponin T and I today and the potential uses for the future. He also gave an interesting reminder about the small changes that it is now possible to detect; equal to detecting a sugar cube being dropped into Loch Ness!

Bernie Croal, outgoing President, and Kath Hayden, incoming President, gave a President’s address to celebrate 70 years of the ACB. Bernie concentrated his talk on where we have come from and reminded the audience to remember those who have gone before and the impact that they have made on scientific advances to healthcare and reflected on the changes to the diversity of the workforce, that we need to continue to improve. Kath gave an overview of the future of the ACB and the work that is continuing in terms of education and training, equality and diversity and sustainability of our services. Whilst looking to the future, the change of name of the Association to the Association for Laboratory Medicine was also officially announced following ratification by members at the AGM. This is an exciting change that will better reflect the breadth of membership of the Association.

The ACB Medal Award is one of the most prestigious awards of the meeting and serves as a platform for those in training to showcase their work. This is always a popular session due to the high calibre of presentations. First place was awarded to Nick Flynn for his talk on ‘A computer vision approach to the assessment of dried blood spot size and quality in newborn screening’, with runner up awarded to Jonathan Atkins for his presentation of ‘Development and validation of a novel serum 7α-hydroxy-cholestn-3-one (C4) LC-MS/MS method for diagnosis of bile acid diarrhoea’.

Parallel sessions that were held during the meeting were organized by each region.

The Trent, Northern and Yorkshire region organized ‘The Leeds experience’, and this session tackled subjects on drug and heavy metal toxicology, addressing common themes and lessons learnt. Talks were given on essential blood testing in patients abusing androgenic anabolic steroids, lead poisoning in children and the metabolic impacts of nitrous oxide abuse.

Northern Ireland concentrated their session on the Belfast Centre of Excellence in Neuroendocrine tumours. This commenced with a fascinating overview of Joy Ardill’s lifetime experience in this field, encompassing the discovery of gastrin, development of assays, and improvements in patient management and outcomes. This was followed by specific insights into carcinoid syndrome and MEN1.

The West Midlands session featured specialists within the region and gave updates on heavy metals, drugs of abuse and bile acid malabsorption. Audience participation was welcomed during a talk on heavy metal poisoning cases before being captivated by a talk on the emergence of nitazene opioids in the UK and their fatal outcome. The final talk focused on the difficulties faced in the diagnosis of bile acid diarrhoea and the advances that have been made.

The focus of the session organized by Scotland was diabetes. Four excellent talks were given during the session on past, present and future specialist endocrine testing, C-peptide measurement in diabetes, islet cell transplant and diabetes in adolescence.

The Southwest and Wessex topics covered the pre- and post-analytical phase with sessions covering a newborn screening programme for neonatal diabetes and the hurdles and challenges of generating the evidence required to satisfy the National Screening Committee that a test meets the standards to be considered for implementation into newborn screening in the UK, the use of clinical decision support in patient test pathways and demand management of ANA and specific IgEs and how utilizing software can improve the patient pathway and reduce inappropriate testing.

The Association of Clinical Biochemists in Ireland has previously published two sets of guidelines: The Biochemistry of Biological Fluids and Guidelines for the Use of Tumour Markers. The Republic of Ireland session provided an update on how atypical fluids can be utilized in diagnosis and patient management and also provided an insight into the potential for circulating tumour DNA to be added to the existing panel of tumour markers. The last talk focused on prolactin and whether it’s always necessary to screen for macroprolactin.

The Southern region session outlined the region’s response to recent challenges in laboratory medicine. This included the performance evaluation of the VIASURE PCR assay for the diagnosis of monkeypox, measurement of free light chains and the need for specialist interpretation and the measurement of FGF23 in patients treated with burosumab.

Myths, Legends and WLIMS, organized by Wales, started with a whistle stop tour of porphyria and the Cardiff Porphyria Centre with an update on current diagnostic and management approaches. This was followed by a talk on blood science standardization across Wales and the successes, failures and challenges that this has presented, before finishing with an overview of WEDINOS (Welsh Emerging Drugs and Identification of Novel Substances) which provides a robust mechanism for the collection and testing of unknown/unidentified or new psychoactive substances.

The North West is home to the Walton Centre, a major neurology hospital, The Christie, a renowned specialist cancer centre, and Royal Manchester Children’s hospital, so it is not surprising that the region concentrated their session on innovations in these areas. An excellent talk on the development of a neuroscience biobank, how the process has been undertaken and the role of the biobank since its inception, including a focus upon external review and the accreditation process, was followed by insightful talks from the Christie on specialist laboratory experiences of cancer biomarker validation. The session was closed with a talk on fetal thyroid function and a rare case of fetal goitre.

A specialist session on POCT was also held exploring challenges seen in neonatal jaundice assessment, hs-cTnI implementation and POCT IT and discussing how these can be navigated and overcome.

A total of 78 posters were presented at the meeting, although less than previous years, there were only a few months between this and the previous meeting and therefore it was quite a triumph to receive so many. The abstracts are published as an Online Supplement to this journal.

The following Poster and Audit awards were made during the Conference:

Clinical Cases Poster Prizes: 1st Roger Bramley ‘Improving diagnosis of a rare form of SCID through collaboration between Immunology and Biochemistry’ and 2nd Jane Oakey ‘Pyroglutamic acidaemia following long term paracetamol use may be an under-diagnosed cause of high anion gap metabolic acidosis’.

Audit Poster Prizes: 1st Carrie Chadwick ‘Nine-year study investigating the prevalence of high risk paraneoplastic antineuronal antibodies identified’ and 2nd Caitlin Kyle ‘Comparison of enzymatic and ion-exchange HbA1c methods to boronate affinity method, effect on Haemoglobin variants’.

Clinical Cases Oral Presentation Prizes: 1st Angela Boal ‘It’s a H-A-R-D-U-P life’ and 2nd Julie Tarling ‘A labyrinthine journey- 12 years to spot patient diagnosis…’.

Finally, the ACB President’s Shield was presented to Jane Pritchard for outstanding leadership as the first CEO of the Association in recognition of her significant contribution.

UKMedLab24 will be held in June in Brighton and will continue to facilitate professional engagement, networking and enhanced collaboration with industry partners.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - UKMedLab2023 conference – A celebration of 70 years of the ACB

Supplemental Material for UKMedLab2023 conference – A celebration of 70 years of the ACB by Sarah Robinson and Kath Hayden in Annals of Clinical Biochemistry.