Wrapping Up Monday at ASM
What a great day at the ASM General Meeting. After interesting educational sessions, fascinating poster presentations and making the rounds on the exhibit hall floor, your ADVANCE reporter is excited to begin planning new coverage.
Patrick Duffy of the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, Richard Sack of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Elisabeth Carniel of the Pasteur Institute held a special press conference about eradicating diseases of antiquity, such as malaria, cholera and the plague. They stressed that the focus should not be on eliminating these diseases, but controlling them. Challenges exist, but as we've seen from the near-elimination of these diseases in certain parts of the world, control is necessary, and lives can be saved.
An afternoon symposium asked if molecular detection and genotyping assays would render culture-based microbiology unnecessary. Brian Sauders, PhD, at the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, offered a brief history of microbiology--starting with selective enrichment or agar media for isolation of new and emerging pathogens, eventual development of new chromagenic agars for gram positive and gram negative organisms, automated blood culture systems, and more recently, rapid identification strips and automated antimicrobial sensitivity characterization. Culture-based microbiology, he reminds, has matured over the past 150 years, and although molecular-based assays are quickly gaining ground, they've really only been around for the past 20 years--and for many labs, much less than that.
As always, the exhibit hall is bustling with vendors offering some of the latest and greatest in microbiology equipment. Stay tuned to ADVANCE ASM Conference Coverage for a product slideshow, featuring highlights from the exhibit hall.