Breath Biopsy Conference 2019: What the Delegates Said
Published on: 9 Dec 2019, under Breath Biopsy
The Breath Biopsy Conference brings together researchers, experts and specialists from early diagnosis, precision medicine, metabolomics, analytical chemistry and beyond to explore and advance breath research for application across a range of diseases. In our previous post we reviewed key themes from the event. Below we share some of the highlights from this year’s delegate feedback and comments from the Owlstone Medical team. Take a look and be sure to express your interest in joining us at future Breath Biopsy Conferences.
“I’m thrilled to be bringing the Breath Biopsy community together for a second time. I really enjoyed the discussion and it’s great to see so many leaders in the field agreeing on the need for larger studies, more collaboration and a commitment to biomarker validation. The field has made outstanding progress over the last year and I’m excited to see what more we can achieve by working together.”
Billy Boyle, CEO & Co-founder, Owlstone Medical
“Thank you for a wonderfully organised two-day conference. Excellent talks, lively debates and real networking. It was also excellent to have a wide variety of people from so many disciplines attending. Personally, I made lots of contacts, and the discussions continued on the train journey back, because I bumped into a couple of fellow delegates.”
Chris Mayhew, Director, Institute for Breath Research, University of Innsbruck
“The Breath Biopsy Conference offers a great chance for us to catch up with everyone in the research community. It’s been really helpful to share our ideas and to have meaningful discussions about potential pitfalls. Seeing the range of presentations makes me excited about the future of the field and the great potential that breath biomarkers represent. In future, I’d like to hear more from the rising stars in the field and to see more interactive sessions focused on building collaborations”
Marc van der Schee, Head of Clinical Sciences, Owlstone Medical
“It’s like a collection of many of the best bits of the IABR meeting.”
Delegate Feedback
“I enjoyed the opportunity to meet Breath Biopsy users as well as researchers just staring out in the breath field. It’s always really inspiring to hear new ideas as well as to seek input and advice from the more experienced members of the field. For me, the stand out talk came from George Hanna. He made some excellent points about the importance of ensuring end-to-end quality in all aspects of breath testing.”
Chad Schaber, Breath Metabolomics Scientist, Owlstone Medical
“This was my first conference on breath research and I really enjoyed it. It was great to reaffirm many of the ideas I’ve developed during my time working on Breath Biopsy and I really feel I learned a lot of new things too, there’s certainly a lot to think about. I hope we can have even more talks next year, and more posters too as I had a great time talking to the presenters about what they’ve been investigating.”
Olga Gandelmann, Biomarker Discovery Lead, Owlstone Medical
“My highlight was Chris Mayhew’s talk, it was an excellent review and general scope overview over the field, especially for someone new to the field.”
Delegate Feedback
“The conference was very interesting indeed. It was comprehensive in its approach and content. Although I am not an academic most of the presentations were digestible and gave good context to this field in relation to the medical, regulatory and monetary challenges faced in getting breath testing diagnostics accepted into mainstream medicine. Dr. Modak’s presentation was particularly interesting as he had been through the FDA regulatory process twice and was able to bring real insight to the whole industry and its potential future.”
Mark Gilmore, Director, Viridis Navitas Capital Partners
“I particularly enjoyed the asthma and infectious diseases breath research. I really liked the talks of Jane Hill, Olaf Holz, Renaud Lous and João Rufo.”
Delegate Feedback
Katja Jansen, Head of Lead Generation, Owlstone Medical
“As someone new to volatolomics, the conference offered a fantastic historical overview delivered by some of the trailblazers in the field. In many ways, this area of research is reminiscent of metabolomics five to ten years ago and I am excited to see how it develops.
I found the panel discussion – and especially the audience’s input – was a particular highlight as it afforded us a snapshot of the current state of the field and the common areas of current research, areas where I hope Breath Biopsy has great potential to bring change.”
Rob Mohney, North America Site Head, Owlstone Medical
“The conference brought together a diverse community to discuss an ultimate goal about breath biopsy.”
Delegate Feedback
“I really enjoyed attending the conference and there were plenty of interesting and varied talks. The presentation by Jessica Lasky-Su was particularly outstanding, especially due to her passionate delivery of her research.”
Applications Chemist, Owlstone Medical
“The standout message for me is that breath analysis is difficult and needs to be more co-ordinated in terms of methodologies and external validation of results. It’s great that there’s such shared awareness of the challenges in the field and that we are starting to address these as a community. I hope this will lead to greater confidence in breath biomarkers, especially as more large trials come online.”
Jeff Buckthal, Senior Business Development Manager, Owlstone Medical
“I’ve really enjoyed getting to see and try out the new Breath Biopsy products.”
Delegate Feedback
Thanks to everyone who took part in the event and to our sponsors Thermo Scientific, Markes International, SepSolve Analytical and LECO for their support. For more interviews from the conference see our playlist, or visit our Community pages for posters and presentations in full.
