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The Fourth FESCC Continuous Postgraduate Course in Clinical
Chemistry:
New Trends in Diagnosis, Monitoring and Management of Tumour
Diseases
The Croatian Society of Medical Biochemists and Slovenian
Association for Clinical Chemistry, together with the Forum of the
European Societies of Clinical Chemistry, IFCC in Europe have
organized the fourth in a series of postgraduate weekend courses
entitled �New Trends in Diagnosis, Monitoring and Management of
Tumour Diseases� promoting continuous postgraduate education of
experts in clinical chemistry and laboratory medicine, and ensuring
the laboratory knowledge harmonization, this time on tumour
diseases in particular.
In the past few years, scientists have made some important
breakthroughs in the understanding the many types of cancer. These
findings are now opening the way to new horizons for diagnosing and
monitoring of these disorders. Renowned experts from European
countries have participated in this specialized FESCC Course
covering the clinical and laboratory aspects of tumour
diseases.
The Course program is divided into three sections. The first
section is devoted to the basic concepts of cancer. The presented
topics are: genomic determination of cancer, interaction between
cell death and cell proliferation, functional genomics and
proteomics, biology of metastasis with focus on proteases, cancer
screening programmes and the influence of the environment on
cancer.
The second section is focused on early detection of cancer,
diagnosis and monitoring including following topics: rational use
of tumour markers, laboratory diagnosis and monitoring of
leukaemias and lymphomas at molecular level, breast cancer, PSA and
other biomarkers for early detection, diagnosis and monitoring of
prostate cancer, colorectal carcinoma and pharmacogenetic and
tumour drugs.
The last section is devoted to new approaches in cancer
diagnosis and monitoring: ethics and quality assessment in genetic
testing, proteomics: a study of therapy resistance in the cancer
cell, detection of disseminated cancer cells in blood and gene
expression profiles � what the clinician needs to know.
At the end of this section, a workshop was organized by Roche
Diagnostics introducing Lightcycler � automated gene system in
molecular diagnostics, allowing the participants to master this
technique.
We do hope that the Course program has fulfilled its goals by
presenting the state-of-the-art and contributing to harmonization
of the diagnosis, monitoring and management of tumour disease.
Professor Elizabeta Topic
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