Tag Archives: CAP webinars

August 2020—The CAP treats emergency use authorization assays similar to FDA-cleared assays and thus requires full verification. In a June 4 CAP webinar, Neil Anderson, MD, D(ABMM), assistant director of clinical microbiology, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, walked through how to approach verification for SARS-CoV-2 assays. Co-presenter Elitza Theel, PhD, D(ABMM), director of the infectious diseases serology laboratory at Mayo Clinic, reported what’s known about protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2.

March 2020—Three decades ago, when Jerald Radich, MD, started doing BCR-ABL testing, the process was highly hands-on. In those days, “we used water baths to do PCR,” said Dr. Radich, an oncologist and director of the molecular oncology lab and member of the Clinical Research Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in a recent CAP TODAY webinar.

March 2019—The family of Mycobacteriaceae includes the genus Mycobacterium, which includes more than 190 species. These organisms have an unusual cell wall. Those of us who work in mycobacteria laboratories know that the cell wall has a high lipid content that makes these organisms acid fast. Thus they’re acid-fast bacteria.

April 2016—Treating Clostridium difficile can be dreadfully difficult, even when a clinician doesn’t have to navigate ordering restrictions based on testing frequency. So when Julie A. Ribes, MD, PhD, director of clinical microbiology at UK HealthCare in Lexington, Ky., received a phone call last year from a clinician who asked for repeat C. difficile testing, she was more than sympathetic.

March 2016—It’s not every day that a monoclonal antibody leads the news. But when former president Jimmy Carter was successfully treated for metastasized melanoma last year with the new drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda), the story made headlines. Carter’s recovery—surprising to many when it was announced in December—may have been helped by traditional radiation and chemotherapy. However, the role played by pembrolizumab spotlighted immunotherapy as an exciting advance in the evolution of cancer treatment.