Clinical Chemistry 53: 1175-1180, 2007;
10.1373/clinchem.2007.091397
(Clinical Chemistry. 2007;53:1175-1180.)
© 2007 American Association for Clinical Chemistry, Inc.
The Clinical Chemist
David E. Bruns, Editor
(dbruns{at}clinchem.aacc.org)
AACC Award Recipients, 2007
AACC Award for Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Chemistry, Sponsored by Siemens Medical Solutions Diagnostics
W. Greg Miller Jr., PhD, DABCC, FACB, is professor of pathology, director of clinical chemistry, and director of pathology information systems at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
He has served the AACC in several capacities. He is currently a member of the board of editors of Clinical Chemistry and is the AACC liaison to the International Organization for Standardization Technical Committee 212 for Clinical Laboratory Testing and In Vitro Diagnostic Test Systems. He has chaired the Lipids and Lipoproteins Division and the Standards Committee. He has been on the faculty of the Review Course in Clinical Chemistry since its inception in 1990. Dr. Miller has also been active in several other professional organizations. He is currently treasurer of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) and a member of several of its subcommittees. He chaired the CLSI Area Committee for Clinical Chemistry and Toxicology for 5 years. Dr. Miller also serves as chair of the Laboratory Working Group of the National Institutes of Health/National Kidney Disease Education Program. He is active on committees of the College of American Pathologists, American Diabetes Association, National Glycohemoglobin Standardization Program, and IFCC. He has contributed to training 26 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in clinical chemistry and has published 100 papers, book chapters, and monographs in areas of analytical measurement procedures and interlaboratory standardization and harmonization.
AACC Award for Outstanding Contributions through Service to the Profession of Clinical Chemistry, Sponsored by Beckman Coulter, Inc.
Mathias M. Müller, MD, is professor of medical chemistry at the University of Vienna, Austria.
He recently retired as director of the Institute of Laboratory Diagnostics at Kaiser Franz Josef Hospital and Preyer Children’s Hospital. Dr. Müller’s major research interests are related to purine metabolism and clinical and applied biochemistry. His research has covered a broad scope of subjects, from early studies of various enzymes, to studies of murine metabolism in skeletal muscle and endothelial cells, to his recent explorations of laboratory diagnosis in transplantation medicine and the use of tumor markers. He has published some 300 scientific papers, is author or co-author of more than 250 abstracts, and has edited or co-edited 7 books and proceedings. He serves on the editorial boards of several leading journals. He has served the Austrian Society of Clinical Chemistry as secretary, treasurer, vice president, and president. He is currently president of the Austrian Society of Quality Assurance and Standardization. He was general secretary of the organization for 11 years, and thus was the main person responsible for the development of the Austrian proficiency testing program covering the whole field of clinical diagnostics. He served as president of the European Society for Study of Purine and Pyrimidine Metabolism in Man. He has served the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) in many capacities, including as vice president and president. He is currently past-president. He negotiated and signed the collaboration agreement between the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute and the IFCC. He initiated the global IFCC campaign for disease management on diabetes mellitus and other programs.
AACC Award for Outstanding Contributions in Education, Sponsored by Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute
Craig A. Lehmann, PhD, C(NRCC), FACB, is dean and a professor at the School of Health Technology and Management at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, N.Y. In addition to these duties, he is currently interim executive dean for the Health Sciences Center.
His 40-year affiliation with Stony Brook University began in 1967 as a member of the chemistry department and includes a 9-year stint chairing the clinical laboratory services division. Among his many duties, his philanthropic endeavors this year alone have generated $1 million for student scholarships. Dr. Lehmann’s teaching has been recognized by many awards, including the State University of New York’s coveted Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Provost’s Award for Exceptional Service to Undergraduate Education. Dr. Lehmann served for 3 years on the editorial board of the AACC’s Strategies and Solutions. He has been a member of the editorial board of Clinical Laboratory Sciences since 1987. In addition to authoring more than 65 journal articles, Dr. Lehmann is the author, editor, or co-editor of 5 clinical laboratory science textbooks. Dr. Lehmann has also produced a 4-part educational video entitled, "Automation in the Clinical Laboratory." He has delivered more than 125 presentations worldwide on clinical analysis by computer-assisted infrared spectroscopy, clinical laboratory education, workflow analysis, laboratory economics, e-health, point-of-care testing, and disease management.
AACC Award for Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Chemistry in a Selected Area of Research, Sponsored by Olympus America Inc., Diagnostic Systems Group
Michael J. Bennett, PhD, FRCPath, DABCC, FACB, is professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the metabolic disease laboratory at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
He also holds the Evelyn Willing Bromley Endowed Chair in Clinical Laboratories and Pathology at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The main focus of Dr. Bennett’s research has been the investigation of inborn errors of mitochondrial energy metabolism with a special emphasis on disorders of fatty acid metabolism. He was among the first to describe the fatal clinical phenotype and the first to identify neonatal metabolite abnormalities in medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase (MCAD) deficiency. These observations led to the expansion of newborn screening by tandem mass spectrometry, in which most newborns are now screened for MCAD deficiency and a number of other inborn errors of metabolism. He is currently studying the hyperinsulinism associated with deficiency of short-chain L-3-hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase (SCHAD), another enzyme of fatty acid oxidation. Dr. Bennett has also devoted 25 years to studying a group of untreatable and devastating inherited neurodegenerative diseases known collectively as Batten disease. He recently identified a novel anti-neuronal apoptosis pathway in one of these diseases, which may lead to the 1st rational therapeutic intervention. He has published more than 225 peer-reviewed scientific papers, reviews, and book chapters and has been involved with the organization of numerous national and international congresses. Dr. Bennett reviews manuscripts for more than 30 journals and is currently on the editorial boards of Clinical Chemistry Journal and Molecular Genetics and Metabolism.
AACC Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievements by a Young Investigator, Sponsored by Roche Diagnostics
Loralie J. Langman, PhD, FCACB, DABCC, DABFT, is director of the drug/toxicology laboratory at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.
She has produced more than 30 publications and 40 abstracts/presentations at national and international meetings. She has many areas of expertise in toxicology, particularly in antipsychotic drugs, drugs of abuse (particularly amphetamine-type stimulants), post-mortem toxicology, and pharmacogenetics. Her current research interests include pharmacogenomics of amphetamine-type stimulants, and genotype–phenotype relationships of psychoactive medications. She is currently the only individual to have achieved diplomate status in all three disciplines offered by the American Board of Clinical Chemistry: clinical chemistry, molecular diagnostics, and toxicological chemistry. Dr. Langman serves on committees for several professional organizations, including the AACC, Society of Forensic Toxicologists, American Academy of Forensic Sciences, National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry, Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists, International Association of Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Clinical Toxicology, and New York Academy of Sciences.
AACC International Travel Fellowship, Sponsored by BD Diagnostics - Preanalytical Systems
Danyal B. Syed, PhD, DABCC, FACB, is a consultant and laboratory director at William F. Ryan Community Health Center in New York, NY.
A member of the AACC for the past 28 years, Dr. Syed has served the New York Metro Section as chair, member of the executive board, and chair of the education committee. He served on the organizing committee of the Northeast regional alliance meetings (LAB MED) in 2004 and 2005. He has served the Clinical Ligand Assay Society (CLAS) as president of the New York Metro Chapter, on the national board, and as chair of several committees. He was also a member of the organizing committee of the joint national meeting of CLAS and the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry in 1998. He is a life member of the Pakistan Society of Chemical Pathologists. Dr. Syed plans to travel to his native Pakistan to visit public and private clinical laboratories in both urban and rural settings, to assess the quality of testing, and to promote the concepts of total quality management. He will also explore the possibility of starting a postdoctoral fellowship program in clinical chemistry at the University of Health Sciences at Lahore.
The AACC Lectureship Award, Sponsored by an educational grant from Siemens Medical Solutions Diagnostics
William E. Evans, PharmD, has been director and chief executive officer of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN, since 2004.
He holds the St. Jude Endowed Chair at the University of Tennessee Colleges of Pharmacy and Medicine. He has held many positions at each institution. From 1986 to 2002, he chaired the pharmaceutical department at St. Jude and was "pharmacist in charge" from 1986 to 1995. A University of Tennessee professor since 1983, he chaired the department of clinical pharmacy from 1983 to 1991. For the past 30 years, his research at St. Jude has focused on the pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and pharmacogenomics of anticancer agents in children. For this research, he has received 3 consecutive National Institutes of Health MERIT Awards from the National Cancer Institute. The major thrust of his pharmacogenomics research is acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children. Dr. Evans has authored more than 300 articles and book chapters, has edited several textbooks and scientific journals, and has received several national awards for his research. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002.
AACC Award for Outstanding Contribution for a Publication in the International Journal Clinical Chemistry, Sponsored by Siemens Medical Solutions Diagnostics
Yuk-Ming Dennis Lo, MD, is professor of chemical pathology and the Dr. Li Ka Shing Professor of Medicine at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
He is also the associate dean for research of the faculty of medicine, the director of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences, and associate director of the state laboratory in oncology in South China. Dr. Lo’s main research interests lie in the biology and diagnostic applications of cell-free DNA and RNA in plasma. In 1997, Dr. Lo discovered the presence of cell-free fetal DNA in the plasma of pregnant women. The work that led to this award-winning paper originated from his demonstration that epigenetic markers can be used for the detection of fetal DNA in maternal plasma. Unlike genetic markers, in which no single marker can be informative in all pregnancies, epigenetic markers have the potential to be used as universal fetal DNA markers. In 2005, Dr. Lo developed the first such marker, SERPINB. In his award-winning paper, Dr. Lo demonstrated that the tumor suppressor gene RASSF1A exhibits a pattern of methylation which is reverse to that of SERPINB5, namely hypermethylated in the placenta but hypomethylated in maternal blood cells. This pattern of methylation allowed Dr. Lo to develop a simple methylation-sensitive restriction-enzyme–mediated real-time polymerase chain reaction assay for the detection of the hypomethylated RASSF1A gene. This RASSF1A assay could be implemented as a fetal DNA control for the performance of fetal RhD genotyping from maternal plasma. The concepts explored in this paper also have implications for the development of other fetal epigenetic markers for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis. Dr. Lo has pioneered a number of other important applications of plasma nucleic acids; he has published more than 230 articles in international journals. The winning paper is: "Hypermethylated RASSFIA in Maternal Plasma: A Universal Fetal DNA Marker that Improves the Reliability of Noninvasive Prenatal Diagnosis." K.C. Allen Chan, Chunming Ding, Ageliki Gerovassili, Sze W. Yeung, Rossa W.K. Chiu, Tse N. Leung, Tze K. Lau, Stephen S.C. Chim, Grace T.Y. Chung, Kypros H. Nicolaides, and Y.M. Dennis Lo. Clin Chem 2006; 52:12, 2211–8.
The Morton K. Schwartz Award for Significant Contributions in Cancer Research Diagnostics, Sponsored by Siemens Medical Solutions Diagnostics
Eleftherios P. Diamandis, MD, PhD, FRCPC, DABCC, FACB, is division head of clinical biochemistry in the department of pathology and laboratory medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital; biochemist-in-chief at the University Health Network and Toronto Medical Laboratories; and division head of clinical biochemistry in the department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada.
Dr. Diamandis has been active in the field of cancer diagnostics over the past 20 years. He currently chairs the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry effort to develop guidelines for the clinical use of tumor markers. His main research interests are tumor markers, especially a group of enzymes called human tissue kallikreins. His most recent research focuses on proteomic methodologies for identifying novel cancer biomarkers and the physiology of kallikrein enzymes, as they relate to cancer initiation and progression. He is also conducting research to validate multiparametric panels for early ovarian, breast, and prostate cancer diagnosis. Dr. Diamandis serves on the boards of 25 journals. He has published more than 400 original papers and holds 13 patents, with another 20 pending. He co-authored a recent textbook, Tumor Markers. For many years, he has run workshops on tumor markers and proteomic technologies at the AACC annual meetings.
The Edwin F. Ullman Award, Sponsored by Dade Behring Inc.
Pratap Singh, PhD, is a research fellow and principal scientist in the assay development group of a Dade Behring facility in Glasgow, Delaware.
He has been on the staff of Dade Behring and its predecessor firms since 1984. His research interests include bio-conjugation, protein modification and characterization, and organic synthesis. In the early 1990s, he conceived the use of dendrimers, well-defined nanoscopic synthetic polymers, in controlling the orientation of immobilized immunoreagents for assays requiring very low detection limits and excellent precision. He and his team demonstrated the feasibility of this concept using polyamidoamine dendrimers and showed it was possible to reproducibly achieve highly specific and sensitive assays for important analytes such as creatine kinase MB subunit, thyroxine, and human thyroid-stimulating hormone. This work led to the development of the Stratus CS, an automated clinical analyzer able to analyze 6 key analytes, including key cardiac markers such as cardiac troponin I and N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide. These and other sensitive assays on the Stratus CS have found great utility in emergency room and critical-care settings, where quick decisions for cardiac and other patients are needed. Dr. Singh is a co-inventor of 7 patents relating to clinical diagnostics and a contributing author of a chapter in a book on dendrimers. He has published more than 20 research articles in the fields of clinical and organic chemistry.
AACC Award for Outstanding Clinical Laboratory Contributions to Patient Safety, Sponsored by Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics
Lucia M. Berte, MA, MT(ASCP)SBB, DLM; CQA, CMQ/OE(ASQ), is the president of Laboratories Made Better! P.C., a company based in Broomfield, CO., that provides consulting services for health-care quality management. For the past decade she has provided laboratory clients and professional organizations in Europe, Asia, and North, Central, and South America with training in quality management systems, assistance in quality management implementation, development and control of laboratory documents, and development of training and competence assessment programs. She has 15 years experience as an American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) inspector. She was a charter member of the AABB committee that developed the "Quality System Essentials" that have become the backbone of the AABB’s standards and accreditation programs. She served as workshop faculty and audioconference speaker for numerous continuing education programs and is a member of the AABB Quality Management Subcommittee of the Standards Committee. She serves on the CLMA Patient Safety and Quality Committee, which recently developed the "Good Laboratory Practices" website, where laboratories can contribute and obtain ideas for improving patient safety. Ms. Berte chaired and participated in several subcommittees and work groups of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute, with particular attention to guidelines for implementing a laboratory quality management system. She was a charter faculty member of the American Society of Clinical Pathology’s (ASCP) teleconference program in the early 1980s, and achieved high scores as a faculty member of ASCP’s Workshops for Laboratory Professionals. She continues to contribute articles, chapters, and books about quality management and patient safety.
AACC Past President’s Award, Sponsored by Cardinal Health, Scientific Products Distribution
John E. Sherwin, PhD, DABCC, FACB, is currently the acting chief of the Genetic Disease Branch that is responsible for the prenatal and newborn screening testing programs of the state of California in Richmond, CA.
His previous positions include directing laboratories at hospitals in Chicago and Fresno, CA. He has held positions as technical director and chief operating officer of multimillion-dollar reference laboratories and been a consultant to a variety of businesses and physician practices. He has more than 50 publications to his credit, primarily in his main research area of pediatric laboratory medicine. He has served the AACC in many capacities with both the Chicago and Northern California local sections. Among his many contributions at the national level, he has chaired the Commission for Education and Scientific Affairs, the Commission on Publications, and the Public Relations Program. He considers his greatest accomplishment as AACC president to be the establishment, with the generous support of Gopal Savjani, of the Past Presidents’ Scholarship fund, which is designed to help young clinical chemists receive the quality postdoctoral training that will keep the AACC and the field of laboratory medicine vibrant for years to come. He also successfully completed the merger of the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry with the AACC. He has served many other organizations as well, including being president of the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry. He is also active in the Association of Public Health Laboratories and is a member of the governing council of the International Society for Newborn Screening.
Meeting Notice
William Beaumont Hospital’s 16th Annual Symposium on Molecular Pathology, DNA Technology in the Clinical Laboratory, will be held September 26–28, 2007, at the Somerset Inn in Troy, Michigan. This 3-day symposium begins Wednesday morning (September 26). CME credit is available. Information: Contact Dr. Domnita Crisan (Phone: 248-551-7261; Fax: 248-551-3694; email: dcrisan{at}beaumont.edu) or visit the website at www.beaumont.edu/dnasymposium. For registration materials, contact: Sherrie Ode (Phone: 248-551-0429; Fax: 248-551-1163; Email: sode{at}beaumont.edu) or register at www.beaumont.edu/dnasymposium.
