Laura McGregor at the 2020 Breath Biopsy Conference

The 2021 Breath Biopsy Conference is scheduled for 12th & 13th October. Click the button to express interest in the next Breath Biopsy Conference:

Express Interest

This presentation was supported by Markes International and SepSolve.

Talk Abstract:

The accurate identification and measurement of biomarkers in biological samples – such as breath, saliva and urine – has the potential to provide rapid, minimally-invasive diagnosis of a range of physiological and pathological conditions, resulting in the delivery of precision medicine.

In large scale clinical trials, hundreds of samples may be collected across multiple sites (e.g. clinics or hospitals) over the course of many weeks. During this biomarker discovery phase, an incorrect identification can compromise the validity of an entire trial, meaning that both robust analytical techniques and confident data mining are required.

Here, we demonstrate the use of a powerful data mining and chemometrics platform to automatically find the significant differences in complex datasets and to create statistical models to predict the class of future samples.

Firstly, chromatographic alignment accounts for retention time drift over the course of the study and minimises the risk of false hits. Next, feature discovery is performed on the raw data to find significant changes across sample classes. In metabolomics matrices, the diagnostic compounds are rarely of high abundance – by adopting a raw data approach, trace peaks are not overlooked. Additionally, the use of raw data enables automated workflows to be adopted, minimising laborious pre-processing steps and speeding up analytical workflows.

We will demonstrate how these innovative tools can be applied to a range of GC-MS file formats using data from real-world clinical trials.

Laura McGregor¹, Anthony Buchanan¹, Bob Green¹, Caroline Widdowson², Helen Martin² and Rachel Szafnauer²
1 SepSolve Analytical, 4 Swan Court, Cygnet Park, Peterborough, UK
2 Markes International Ltd, Gwaun Elai Medi-Science Campus, Llantrisant, Wales, UK

Speaker Biography:
Dr Laura McGregor has a background is in analytical forensic science, and her Ph.D. (at the University of Strathclyde, UK) focused on the chemical fingerprinting of environmental contamination using GC×GC−TOF MS. At SepSolve she oversees marketing activities across the full product range, with a particular focus on GC×GC.

The 2021 Breath Biopsy Conference is scheduled for 12th & 13th October. Click the button to express interest in the next Breath Biopsy Conference:

Express Interest