Guest author: Han Joo Lee, Ph.D., SeraCare Technical Product Manager A cursory look at recent Zika Virus outbreak news headlines is alarming enough: “Zika Virus birth defects may be the ‘Tip of the Iceberg’, experts say”; “Brain damage in Zika babies is far worse than doctors expected”; and “Zika mutates extremely quickly, which is why it’s so scary”. In addition, for the United States the estimated range maps of the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus have been recently updated, widening the range previously reported to all but 10 states within the US.

With over “Cancer Moonshot: A Call to Action” 20,000 scientists, the American Association for Cancer Research conference describes itself as a ‘must-attend event for cancer researchers and the broader cancer community’. One sign of the prominence of this event is the fact that US Vice President Joseph Biden will be delivering a special closing address, in connection with the recent announcement of the announced at the recent World Economic Forum.

We are living through a time of rapid change in the clinical genetics laboratory, though at times it may appear that change doesn’t occur fast enough given the challenges within the existing healthcare system. At the recent Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference held in San Francisco March 7 through 11 2016, here are a few summary highlights of the conference.

The Keystone Symposia is an organization with 44 years of history on specialized topics across the fields of molecular and cellular biology. This week in Banff, Alberta, Canada is a Keystone Symposia conference called The Cancer Genome, along with a joint meeting on Genomics and Personalized Medicine. Their Twitter description (@KeystoneSymp) describes the Keystone organization as “A catalyst for accelerating life science discovery and connecting scientists within and across disciplines at symposia worldwide”.

Micrograph of Lung Carcinoma Fine Needle Aspirate courtesy of Ed Uthman via Flickr This year's Association for Molecular Pathology conference was held in Austin Texas November 4-7 2015 had the theme of 'Realizing the Dream of Precision Medicine'. Here are a few of the presentations that stood out as outstanding, and the conference program indicates where the field of molecular pathology currently places its emphasis (which is primarily oncology) and where it may be headed in the coming years (including rare genetic disorders, non-invasive prenatal testing, and even a plenary on the human microbiome).

Dr. Condie Carmack has over 30 years of experience in the life sciences and diagnostic industries, having been prior to GenomOncology the Director of Oncology Programs at Vela Diagnostics, developing an NGS-based system for worldwide regulatory approval, and prior to that helped found (as General Manager) the Cancer Genetics Laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine with Dr. Marilyn Li.

In 2011, the National Academy of Science published the results of a year-long committee effort called ‘Toward Precision Medicine: Building a Knowledge Network for Biomedical Research and a New Taxonomy of Disease’. This committee was charged to explore the feasibility and need to develop a new taxonomy of human disease based upon molecular biology, with the concept that with an explosion of molecular data about individuals with disease, there was a great untapped opportunity to use these data to improve health. FLICKR, JOHN GOODE

In this video interview, SeraCare’s Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Russell Garlick shares some background about SeraCare’s history of manufacturing controls and reference materials for infectious disease diagnostics, and how advances in Precision Medicine reveal a need for similar materials for the fields of oncology and maternal health.

You are a translational research scientist, clinical pathologist, or laboratory test developer, always on the lookout for new tools, best practices, the latest news, and quality information. Your daily work impacts people’s heath, which is why you entered the field in the first place, and you have seen tremendous change in the past few years with breakthrough genomic technology increasingly blurring the lines between research and ‘the clinic’.