The Vth Clinical Laboratory and in vitro Diagnostics European Symposium on Standardization and Tumor Markers was held 16-17 April at the Institut d’Estudis Catalans, in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). The Catalan Association for Clinical Laboratory Sciences, under the IFCC auspices and IUPAC sponsorship, organised this event. Dr. Xavier Filella (Hospital Clínic, Barcelona) was the chairman and Dr. Àngels Bosch (Consorci Laboratori Intercomarcal, Igualada) was the technical secretary of the Symposium.

The main subject of the symposium was the present and the future of standardization of the measurement of tumour markers, and particularly its incidence in their clinical usefulness. More than 100 participants took part in the meeting that was based on real experiences from laboratory professionals and industry, including members of Abbott, Beckman-Coulter, Olympus, Roche Diagnostics and Siemens.

Participants discussed the state of art of the standardization in four round-tables, that included the following topics: “It is necessary to obtain the standardization of tumour markers, but what are the problems? ”; “The industry and the standardization of tumour markers: why are our results so different? ”; “The clinical usefulness of tumour markers”; and finally “The interpretation of results: standardization and cut-off values”.

Difference between methods for the measurement of prostate specific antigen (PSA) with the adoption of the International Reference Preparation WHO 96/670 was one of the highlights of the meeting. The acceptation of this reference material by clinical laboratories supports the adoption of a new cut-off value at 3.1 mg/L instead of 4.0 mg/L. On the other hand, the experts indicated that, in addition to the reference material, there are other factors such as incubation time, matrix effect and the platform used also influence the results.

Another conclusion of the symposium was that, although major advances had been made for the measurement of many tumour markers (e.g.: carcinoembryonic antigen, a-fetoprotein or choriogonadotropin), their complexity impedes the inter-changeability of the results between different methods.

Edited by Edgard Delvin PhD, FCACB, FACB
Editor