ISTH is always a big event for DiaPharma. 2023 was no exception. DiaPharma is mainly at ISTH to connect with our customers, but we also have an emphasis on learning the latest and greatest from the best in our business. Instead of one blog, we asked a few of our team members for their standout memories from 2023 ISTH to share. Consider yourself warned, you will read the words “smoke” and “cocktails” more than once.

Gloria Sukes O’Neill
Director of Commercial Operations

My highlight was the cocktail party, but I think I should leave it at that. 🙂
Kidding. My winner was a talk, “Combined Hemophilia A with NETS” from @Tomasz Kaminski, from University of Pittsburgh. It was all about joint bleeds in HA and NETs released by neutrophils. It really dove into the cycle of thrombo-inflammation promoting joint damage.

Jennifer J. Kiblinger
Scientific Director

ISTH always feels like a reunion of sorts. It’s a great time to reconnect with customers and partners. One of the highlights for me this year was seeing @Björn Dahlbäck receive the Robert P. Grant Medal in recognition of his remarkable accomplishments in the field of thrombosis and hemostasis. One of my first “lessons in coag” back in 2000 was about him and his discoveries regarding the FV Leiden mutation as a cause of APC Resistance. This summer it was like watching a hemostasis rock star enter the hall of fame.

Olivia Stricker, Ph.D.
Business Development Manager

My take home thoughts/memories about the event were directly related to:
– apocalyptic wood smoke
– DiaPharma’s amazing cocktail hour
– and NETs, NETs, NETs.

I attended a master class about NETs where Dr. Kim Martinod provided a ton of clarity on what the issues at hand within the field are and what the standardization committee is hoping to do about it. It seems like this field is evolving so rapidly that it is a challenge to implement consistency with methodologies. That and a lack of off the shelf commercial kits make it seem like some are comparing apples to oranges to even grapes and bananas. Good thing DiaPharma is helping to bring a solution to the US. If interested, search “nucleosome detection ELISA kit” on our site.

Matthew Sobo, MS MHA
Scientific Product Manager, Hemostasis and Instrumentation

Oh, Montreal. You were my first—ISTH meeting that is. And while the wildfires raging further north in Quebec gave the city a distinct campfire-y smell, inside the conference the most prominent smell was coffee. Though that may be my own bias as I frequently had a Cup of Joe in front of my nose; Tim Horton’s (mixing the Canadian Staples of ML-00-01084 Rev01 hockey and coffee) being located along my route to the conference from my hotel. While returning to my hotel one evening after enjoying downtown Montreal, I was exposed to what may be the most stereotypical Canadian event ever. A Zamboni being driven down the street with, what appeared to be, a keg of beer strapped down by the driver’s seat.

Situated with but an exhibition pass, I was only able to learn of most of the talks secondhand and those while in between conversations with the many researchers who stopped at the DiaPharma booth to discuss one, or more, of our toys: the FDA cleared T-TAS 01, the novel platelet forces analyzer *Atlas PST, and the fully automated coagulation analyzer *Ceveron® s100.

*For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

The one talk I was able to attend was a presentation by Dr Verbruggen, the ‘inventor’ of the Nijmegen variation on the Bethesda inhibitor assay for Factor VIII. The talk focused on the next step for Factor 8 inhibitor testing; shortened time and fully automatable. It was exciting to see others excited about something DiaPharma is helping Technoclone bring to market. At least one key opinion leader asking flat-out “when will this be available for my lab?” NICE!

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