Photo tour of ACMG 2015

ACMG recognizes its conference sponsors

Last week, I attended and presented at the American College of Medical Genetics & Genomics annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. Here is a photo tour from the conference. 

Below are photos of those sharing information about Down syndrome at the ACMG 2015 annual meeting.

First the labs offering non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPS) for Down syndrome, and leading off with Sequenom, the first lab to offer NIPS:

Sequenom has launched a test focused on just Down syndrome, Trisomy 18, and fetal sex called VisibiliT. According to the test’s tag line, it’s “Simply relevant.”

Next is Ariosa, maker of Harmony:

Ariosa was the first lab to distribute the written resource recognized by the ACMG to be delivered to patients with a screen-positive NIPS result, the Lettercase booklet Understanding a Down syndrome Diagnosis. 

The next lab is Illumina, maker of verifi, along with those labs offering their versions of NIPS based on verifi’s technology:

Progenity, which offers verifi by Progenity (apologies for the poor focus):

Integrated Genetics, a division of LabCorp, which offers InformaSeq, the sponsor of the conference’s app which had its InformaSeq logo appear each time the app was accessed by attendees:

And, Counsyl, which offers Counsyl’s Informed Pregnancy Screen, and has calculated the PPV for its test:

Finally, of the NIPS labs, is Natera, maker of Panorama. Natera has also agreed to provide Lettercase’s booklet to its provider network. It had some of the most prominent marketing, on the escalators of the convention center:

I have shared a photo of Natera’s exhibit booth in a previous post, but I wanted to share how it looks in person where the wheel in the sky keeps on turning:

Finally, as far as exhibit booths go, the Support Organization For Trisomy 18 and 13 (SOFT), also had a booth, which they really invested in:

We met a mom and her teenage daughter with Trisomy 18 along with another volunteer with SOFT. I hope they had a lot of traffic during the conference.

There was no exhibit booth for sharing information about Down syndrome, in contrast to the number of exhibit booths for laboratories highlighting their prenatal tests for Down syndrome. But, there were several others at the conference sharing information about Down syndrome. Like:

Dr. Brian Skotko, who presented on his Down syndrome clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital:

Dr. Skotko is seen here with my colleague at the National Center for Prenatal & Postnatal Down Syndrome Resources, Stephanie Meredith. Meredith presented a poster on the relative effectiveness of the various Down Syndrome Information Acts, as determined by how many states were delivering professionally-recommended information.

Also attending ACMG was Melissa Parisi, who presented on the DS-Connect registry, which provides a database for researchers interested in Down syndrome:

Katie Berrier, genetic counselor at Duke, presented two posters based on her and her colleagues research on expectant mothers and their experience with prenatal testing. Here she is pictured with the poster she was lead author on:

And, finally, yours truly, who was presenting on the first half of my research article published in the current edition of AJOB Empirical Ethics:

Lastly, the conference was held in Salt Lake City, Utah. I’ll finish this post with two of my favorite things from the conference: the trees were in bloom and several of us enjoyed the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s open rehearsal.

Thanks to all who have supported the National Center, which makes it possible for Stephanie and me to attend and present at these conferences.