Laura Miles at BBCon 2023
From Research to Routine Screening: Meeting the Evolving Demands of Clinical Breath Analysis with Thermal Desorption.
00:00 ‘From Research to Routine Screening: Meeting the Evolving Demands of Clinical Breath Analysis with Thermal Desorption’
09:45 Question and Answer Session
Talk Abstract:
Breath based biomarker discovery research is entering a particularly exciting phase with many studies scaling up to large clinical trials and generating viable candidate marker compounds. As the size of sample sets increases so does the length of individual studies and the number of personnel involved. This scale-up of efforts introduces more
opportunities for error and highlights the need for rigorous quality control. Thermal desorption (TD) coupled with GC-MS has long been established as the gold standard technique for breath analysis. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in breath are pre-concentrated by collection onto sorbent packed tubes and shipped to a central laboratory for analysis. These tubes are small, physically robust, easy to transport and provide extended sample storage stability compared to other methodologies. In this presentation we will discuss how quality control strategies can be built into thermal desorption-based workflows throughout the life cycle of every sample tube. These strategies include the use of surrogates and internal standards, automated water management, sample archiving and extending dynamic ranges with automated split re-collection. We will also explore the generation of pooled biological quality control samples from breath and how they could be applied to longitudinal studies in evaluating the quality of the data, reproducibility of the method and instrumentation, as well as correcting for any system bias over time. The drive for standardisation across breathomics workflows is essential to support the transition from research into routine screening and the future evolution of clinical breath analysis.
Speaker Biography:
As in the thermal desorption business unit Laura is responsible for developing new methods and testing Markes International’s suite of thermal desorbers for new and emerging applications. Laura joined Markes International as a customer support specialist in 2014 before moving to work in application development. As part of her current role Laura works closely with key opinion leaders in collaborations across a variety of market areas and she has a particular specialism in environmental analysis, breathomics and defence and forensics.
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