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Klinisk Biokemi i Norden · 2 2016
Nordic Congress in Clinical Chemistry /
Biochemistry 2016 in Odense, Denmark, June 14-17
Ivan Brandslund
The congress is now close to start.
The congress is held in the gar-
den of Denmark, Funen in Hans
Christians Andersen’s fairy tale
city, Odense. The Hotel is located
at the site of the old monastery of
the Blackfriars community. This
is also the middle of the old town
with buildings dating back to the Middle Ages and
nice small restaurants situated around the lively place
with food market every Wednesday and Saturday. In
the local beer bar you perhaps will meet the national
herald of Danish songs, Kim Larsen.
The congress committee has tried to shape the
scientific content to embrace and handle the labora-
tories routine problems as well as focusing on future
challenges and opportunities. The magic words here
are Targeted Therapy, Tailored Treatment, Precision
Medicine and Personalised Medicine.
The opening plenary lecture
The opening plenary lecture will focus on the rapid
increase in life expectancy and hence the increase in
number of old and very old people and their health
and disease.
We move on to an overview of principles and tech-
nologies in the exploration of the enormous amount
of data and knowledge that actually can be analysed
and put together to meaningful health care informa-
tion. This will be scrutinised by professionals actually
datamining electronic patient-record systems for sur-
veillance of infections and epidemics, large numbers of
analytical test results in acutely admitted patients for
safer and more precise handling, mining of the human
genome in large number of patient and control cohorts
for risk prediction for the development of disease; also,
further mapping of the human metabolome and use
of applied software systems to handle these data will
be presented.
The Nordic Working Group on Preanalytics will
report on new knowledge concerning preanalytical
mistakes, including a brief introduction to the Euro-
pean work on this area, the plans so far for a similar
work in the Nordic countries, and finally a demon-
stration of different aspects concerning preanalyti-
cal variation, e.g. preanalytical EQA programs and
sampling QC.
Session 3 will focus on the increasing knowledge
on mechanisms in bone disease as seen in diabetes
and cancer, where new markers are enabling focused
treatment.
A following plenary session will focus on the 15
years of biochemical and immunological research that
paved the way for the use of monoclonal antibodies in
cancer and inflammatory diseases.
Session 4 is the Astrup Prize competition where
we again will have the pleasure and joy of listening to
young upcoming researchers from the very top of the
Scandinavian laboratory community. We expect good
results that can be applied to the benefit of mankind!
Session 5 will take a look into the future of bio-
chemistry to the promised land of cell biology, mole-
cular biology, biochemistry and genetics.
Session 6 will report on new impressive results in
the diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of myeloma,
the increasing use of cell free DNA in diagnosis and
monitoring treatment efficacy in colorectal and breast
cancer and finally on the methodology of investi-
gations that have shown how immune competence
problems in cancer can be manipulated to improve
treatment results. Last, the European Foundation for
laboratory medicines working group on Personalized
Medicine will report on the work and developments in
the area using diagnosis and treatment of melanoma
as an example.
Posters:
We hope to present at least 60-80 posters. An arrange
ment late Wednesday afternoon will combine wine
tasting with poster demonstrations and discussions
(did you know that Denmark has been internationally
approved as a wine producing country?).
