Horiba has recently announced the publication of scientific studies which demonstrate the excellent performance of its new HELO high throughput fully automated hematology platform on body fluid and pathological samples. Horiba’s Yumizen® H2500 and H1500 automated hematology analysers within the HELO platform deliver enhanced precision for complete blood counts and white blood cell (WBC) differential testing, with body fluid analysis included as standard. This improves diagnosis, minimizes unnecessary manual microscopy slide reviewing and enhances laboratory workflow, as highlighted by two recent scientific evaluation studies.
The first study was undertaken by Nantes University Hospital (CHU de Nantes) focusing on the need for automated analysis of biological fluids for robust and reliable results reporting. Hematological analysis of body fluids (BF) can provide clinicians with valuable diagnostic information as it can indicate a number of serious medical conditions. Manual microscopy has traditionally been used to determine total and differentiated WBC in BFs, however, results can be affected by inter-operator variability and take time to undertake. By using an automated method of analysis of WBC in a body fluid smear, this can improve turnaround times and accuracy.
To ensure the robustness and reliability of automated BF analysis in routine laboratory workflows, the evaluation study was undertaken on the performance of the automated body fluid analysis cycle on the Yumizen H2500. The study included 98 samples from cerebro-spinal, pleural, ascitic, pericardic and bronchoalveolar liquid (BAL) fluids which were used for comparative leukocyte and erythrocyte counts, as well as differential. This confirmed the good analytical performance of Yumizen analyser in comparison with conventional microscopic count, as well as a reference analyser.
The second study explored the flagging efficiency of the new analyser. Pathological samples, coming from patients with altered hematopoiesis, often trigger a WBC-Diff flag; this is due to poor cell separation and requires a manual slide review (MSR) by microscopy to confirm the WBC differential. Laboratory workload would be optimized if MSR could be reduced without compromising patient care. Therefore, the study undertaken by the Institut Bergonié Comprehensive Cancer Centre compared the flagging performance in the WBC differential of the Yumizen H1500/H2500 to a routine analyser. This included patients with pathology or treatment affecting hematopoiesis, such as those undergoing chemotherapy or with onco-hematologic disorders.
The study on 228 pathological samples (100 from patients on chemotherapy for solid tumours and 128 from patients with malignant blood disease) demonstrated an improvement in the WBC-diff analysis and reliability of the Yumizen H1500/2500 analyser compared to a routine analyser. It delivered better precision and specificity, due to improved cell separation, and a significant decrease (-21%) in unnecessary morphology reviewing by microscopy, thus saving significant time in the laboratory.
Commenting on the successful outcome of the studies, Mandy Campbell, Horiba Medical said, “These evaluation studies undertaken by recognized authorities in hematological analysis, demonstrate the excellent performance of our new Yumizen H1500/H2500 automated hematology analysers with both body fluid and pathological samples. Body fluid analysis is available as standard on these analysers which have been shown to enhance diagnoses and lower film review rates to improve laboratory workflow.” www.horiba.com/medical

Astell Scientific is a world renowned manufacturer and supplier of steam sterilizers. Astell Scientific autoclaves, steam generators and effluent decontamination systems (EDS) are designed to meet the exacting demands of modern Laboratory, Research and Medical professionals, and as such incorporate innovations such as colour touchscreen controllers as standard throughout the range.

We manufacture:
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All Astell autoclaves are manufactured in accordance with standards and directives including ISO 9001:2015, Pressure Equipment Directive (PED 2014/68/EU) and CE (Conformité Européenne).www.astell.com

Jackson ImmunoResearch manufactures secondary antibodies and conjugates, with an outstanding reputation for quality, earned over 30 years. Our products are used in Western Blotting, IHC/ICC/IF, Flow Cytometry, ELISA, Electron Microscopy and many other immunological techniques. From our UK office we serve Europe with euro pricing, technical service and fast delivery. www.jacksonimmuno.com

GAMBICA is the Trade Association for Instrumentation, Control, Automation and Laboratory Technology in the UK. Our insight and influence help our members to be more competitive by increasing their knowledge and impact. Together we remove barriers and maximise the market potential in our industry.
GAMBICA members are active in the following sectors:
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Precision cancer medicine requires personalized biomarkers to identify patients who will benefit from specific cancer therapies. In an effort to improve the accuracy of predictions about prognosis for patients with breast cancer and the efficacy of personalized therapy, University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers have developed a method to precisely identify individual patients who have aggressive breast cancer. The new approach involves sorting and characterizing invasive breast cancer cells by epigenetic characteristics – a method that involves analysing how particular regulatory proteins interact with DNA to control their expression – as well as by how the genes are amplified or abnormally expressed. The researchers reported that they used this technique to identify potential new prognostic markers to predict distinct clinical outcomes for two major subtypes of breast cancer.

“This paper describes a ground-breaking multi-omics technology to discover drivers of proliferative and invasive breast tumours,” said Xian Chen, PhD, professor in the UNC School of Medicine Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics. “We think that eventually, these tools could help doctors better predict which particular patients have a good response, or acquire resistance to treatment.” Doctors often rely on information about tumour size, whether the cancer has spread and the tumour subtype to make treatment decisions. In addition to clinical subtypes of breast cancer, researchers have discovered molecular subtypes that have been used to help make treatment decisions. However, Chen argues that existing markers do not adequately distinguish breast cancer patient sub-populations with different clinical outcomes.

“Single ‘omics’ approaches, which rely on either genomics, transcriptomics, or proteomics alone, fail to dissect the heterogeneity that contributes to individual patients’ variability in terms of their rates of tumour growth, metastasis, or susceptibility to anti-cancer therapies,” he said. “Because biomarkers are not available to distinguish distinct patient sub-populations that are either responsive or resistant to particular drugs, doctors do not have all the tools they need to predict patient response to treatment and outcomes.”
In their study, the researchers wanted to see if they could stratify patients beyond existing molecular subtypes. Their goal was to develop a method to determine which patients within a single subtype would develop resistance or invasive cancer. There are five major molecular subtypes of breast cancer, which are classified based on how genes are expressed in a tumour.

Chen and his colleagues analysed luminal breast cancer and basal-like breast cancer, which is more commonly known as triple negative breast cancer, using breast cancer samples from two large international studies, The Cancer Genome Atlas and the Molecular Taxonomy of Breast Cancer International Consortium.

To move beyond subtype for identifying exactly which patients might develop resistance, they first sorted the most invasive tumour cells in frozen tissue using a molecular probe that was able to distinguish tumour from adjacent non-malignant cells or tissue by binding to an epigenetic regulator, or a histone methylase, called G9a. This enzyme has been reported by other scientists to be abnormally upregulated in many cancer types, including breast cancer.

They then identified select proteins that were working with G9a as partners-in-crime, and worked backwards from there to identify the genetic abnormalities linked to those partner proteins in the cancer cell. They found in many instances the genes for these interactor proteins were amplified in multiple copies, or abnormally overexpressed, rather than mutated.

“Nowadays, people think somatic mutations of select genes are the primary drivers of tumorigenesis,” Chen said. “We didn’t see many mutations on our identified driver genes. We actually found the genes encoding those interactors have a high frequency amplification in breast cancer patients with poor prognosis.”

They then used this information to generate sets of genes that encoded these “interactor proteins,” and identified those linked to poor prognosis in patients. Looking ahead, Chen and his colleagues plan to determine the specificity and sensitivity of multi-omic aberrations of particular interactor gene sets as new systems biomarkers to predict cancer patient prognosis.

University of Northern Carolina