The American Society Hematology (ASH) Conference is world’s most comprehensive hematology event of the year. The 2018 edition was the 60th ASH Annual Meeting and was organized in San Diego, California. More than 25,000 hematology professionals and approximately 250 exhibitors were present. Exhibitors included pharmaceutical companies, medical suppliers, publishers, non-profit organizations, clinical diagnostic and research-based companies.
RR Mechatronics was present with a booth giving “live” Lorrca demonstrations to the ASH attendees. Since ASH has put Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) as one of their priorities, key persons from Pharma, Hospitals and Research institutions were drawn to these Lorrca demonstrations. In addition, due to the combination of an improved understanding of SCD disease and both governmental and regulatory support there is an increased interest for the development of targeted drugs for SCD. For most of these Lorrca-demo visitors the ability to measure the “Point of Sickling (PoS)” with the Lorrca Oxygenscan was a real eye opener. Measuring the PoS will in the future provide professionals the ability to (I) determine the severity of the disease, (II) measure the effect of new and novel treatments and (III) monitor patients. No other technology has the ability to do this. Therefore, high interest was generated to include the Lorrca in research or (pre)clinical studies.
The poster that was presented by our collaborators from the University Medical Center Utrecht and the Texas Children’s Hospital has drawn a lot of attention as well. The results depicted on this poster show, that the Lorrca Oxygenscan is a semi-automated, inexpensive, highly reproducible, and rapid measurement to fully characterize red blood cell (RBC) deformability during induced oxygen depletion. Furthermore, it demonstrates that key Lorrca Oxygenscan measurements- PoS, EImin, and EImax- correlate with known clinical measurements of SCD severity.
In general, the ASH was very successful, resulting in numerous quality leads and follow-up appointments. We’re looking already forward to the European Hematology Association Conference that will be held in Amsterdam in June 2019.
