The 2012 Histopathology Event: Advances In Research And Techniques ( 8:00 am )
30th March 2012, The Oak Suite, W12 Conferences, The Hammersmith Hospital, London, W12 0HS
This is the 9th Annual event (originally called Improving Immunohistochemistry) and is the flagship meeting for Euroscicon. Held in the centre of London this meeting draws together international experts to discuss the need for technical-based updates in the areas of immunohistochemistry, clinical and research based histopathology and in situ hybridisation. This meeting gathers together workings from clinical, academic and pharmaceutical organisations.
We include a troubleshooting panel session in this event, so that delegates can discuss their work directly with a panel of experts.
Meeting Chair: Dr Will Howat, Cambridge Research Institute, Cancer Research UK
9:00 – 9:45 Registration
9:45 – 10:00 Introduction by the Chair: Dr Will Howat, Cambridge Research Institute, Cancer Research UK
10:00 – 10:30 Immunohistochemistry and TMA’s in the Target Discovery Process
Arthur Lewis MedImmune, Cambridge
Establishing the link between target expression pattern and disease is a vital step in the drug discovery process. Here I will show how MedImmune is utilising immunohistochemistry (IHC) and Tissue MicroArrays (TMA) to frontload target expression analysis and build early human disease association data for novel and poorly validated therapeutic targets. For all potential antibody therapeutic targets it is important to demonstrates the target has a strong link with disease, has the right target tissue expression versus normal tissue, the right sub-cellular localisation suitable for targeting with an antibody and that correct distribution of antibody is achievable in vivo i.e. no significant antigen sink. This talk will give particular examples of how we are addressing these questions for targets expressed on tumour infiltrating immune cells to support our immune mediated killing therapeutic strategies and discuss the uses and limitations of TMA for this class of target.
10:30 – 10:45 Innovation within Histology
Dr Iris Nagelmeier, Targos, Kassel, Germany
This talk will discuss advances in Detection, Probes and Digital Pathology
10:45 – 11:15 Immunohistochemistry/In Situ Hybridization in Neuropathology – Diagnosis & Research
Dr Stephen McQuaid, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK
Immunohistochemistry in diagnostic neuropathology is used in the assessment of neurosurgical biopsies, muscle and CSF cytology and in autopsies. Furthermore neuropathological studies on human and small animal tissues are a major contributor to basic and applied research in the neurosciences reflecting the complexity and diversity of neurological disease. For example, immunohistochemical and in situ hybridization studies in neuropathology have played a lead role in identifying and elucidating the pathogenesis of a wide range of neurological diseases (including variantCJD and multiple sclerosis). Examples from diagnostic surgical neuropathology, dementia and research (virus detection in the CNS and MS) will be used to illustrate the cardinal role that immunohistochemstry/ISH plays in neuropathology. While traditional formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues form the basis of much of the studies on neuropathology specimens, examples of the optimal use of snap-frozen tissue sections and vibratome sectioning/confocal scanning laser microscopy in research will also be described.
11:15 – 11:45 Speakers’ photo then mid-morning break and trade show
11:45 – 12:15 Virtual slides in medical research
Dr Darren Treanor, St James’s University Hospital, Leeds
12:15 – 12:30 Digital Pathology Enterprise (DPE) Solutions for Pathology and Tissue-Based Research
Professor Peter Hamilton, PathXL, Belfast, Ireland
Digital pathology has been used in the past across various point applications for supporting tissue-based research, biomarker discovery and diagnostics. Modern approaches require full integration of application functionality together with interoperability with existing LIMS and IT systems in both the healthcare and research setting.
PathXL has developed a Digital Pathology Enterprise (DPE) platform that captures these requirements. The solution underpins applications in education, EQA, biomarker evaluation, TMA management, image analysis, biobanking and clinical workflow. A powerful PathXL Management Engine integrates and shares data across the range of applications – facilitating workflow, data search, analytics and reporting. This engine underpins a range of user applications that make digital pathology an essential part of the modern pathology laboratory, facilitating tissue archiving, the discovery and validation of companion diagnostics and health care delivery within a busy diagnostic laboratory.
12:30 - 13:00 High throughput protein expression profiling of breast cancer: orders of probability
Raza Ali, CRUK Cambridge Research Institute, UK
Breast cancer is not one disease but a collection of related diseases. Current histopathological evaluation of breast cancer does not encompass this variety, severely impairing therapeutic decision making. Gene expression experiments have generated an alternative molecular classification of breast cancer identifying subgroups of patients with tumours defined by characteristic gene expression signatures and different clinical outcomes. Although several of these signatures have been commercialised there are concerns as to their clinical utility. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) has several advantages over gene expression assays and is already widespread in clinical pathology. The challenge of translating complex gene expression signatures into IHC assays of just a few markers has only been partly met. I will describe recent work, including our own, in translating these signatures. I will also describe our strategy for refining this classification and staying abreast of emerging molecular studies including our strategy for antibody selection, optimisation and exclusion. Finally, I will discuss the current contribution of IHC to the molecular classification of breast cancer.
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch and trade show
14:00 – 14:45 Question and Answer Session
Delegates will be asked to submit questions to a panel of experts. Questions can be submitted before the event or on the day
14:45 – 15:00 Fully automated TMA production – an essential tool for any Biobank
Dr Balwir Matharoo-Ball, Nottingham University Hospitals¸UK
Histopathology departments receive numerous tissue samples each day that require diagnostic analysis. Commonly this material is only available in small amounts, in particular tumour tissue, and may only be 2-5 mm thick which if sliced into tissue sections may only yield enough tissue for up to 100 arrays. For this reason the Nottingham Health Science Biobank which has approval for the use of excess archival material has opted to use the fully automated TMA GrandMaster tissue arrayer in conjunction with the Pannoramic 250 slide scanner to produce reproducible and cost saving TMA which can yield about 300 times this number. The technique could therefore generate 100,000 assays compared to 100 assays if just sections of samples were utilised.
15:00 – 15:30 Afternoon Tea/Coffee and trade show
15:30 – 15:45 Go forth and multiplex: Conquering the challenges of tissue imaging and analysis.
Ms Roslyn Lloyd, Caliper Life Sciences, UK
Tissue-based approaches to research are increasingly popular. However, imaging tissue sections poses additional challenges. In fluorescence, qualitative and quantitative reliability are compromised by auto-fluorescence, problems of overlapping chromogenic signals pose similar imaging difficulties in brightfield and the analysis of tissue images is far more difficult than for cultured cells; reliable methods for dealing with these are required.
A multispectral approach enables simultaneous imaging and quantitation of multiple analytes even when spatially and spectrally overlapping.
Dedicated tissue analysis software can be readily trained to separate the image into appropriate morphologic regions, e.g., cancer, stroma and inflammation. The selected regions are further analysed for specific cellular/subcellular localization of markers, which is used for quantitation of molecular data.
Combining these technologies within a slide sampling system allows the unsupervised high-throughput imaging, analysis, quantitation and scoring of tissues sections, either for whole slides or TMAs.
15:45 – 16:15 Talk to be confirmed
Professor Jorge Reis-Filho , Chester Beatty Laboratories, The Institute of Cancer Research, London
16:15 – 16:30 Using whole slide image analysis to address research applications in pathology
Dr Kate Lillard , Aperio, UK
Aperio provides a complete solution for digitizing immunohistochemistry, from whole slide scanning to image analysis. Whole slide image analysis allows researchers to evaluate data objectively & consistently from slide to slide, without the bias associated with analyzing small snapshot images from the microscope. Aperio provides image analysis tools for analyzing all types of immunohistochemistry across whole slides, including nuclear markers, membrane proteins, colocalization of multiple stains, and microvessels. Dr. Lillard will discuss how Aperio image analysis can be used to quantitatively address common applications in experimental pathology.
16:30 – 17:00 In situ Proximity Ligation Assay (PLA) as a novel approach on breast cancer research
Fabricio Barros, University of Nottingham, UK
Novel techniques such as in situ proximity ligation assay (PLA, Olink, Sweden) can be a useful tool for detecting, visualising and quantifying the frequency of protein...
Url: http://www.regonline.co.uk/hist2012
