Dr. Ronald Booth, BSc, MSc, PhD, FCACB, FAACC is the recipient of the 2022 CSCC Award for Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Chemistry.

Dr. Ronald Booth is a Clinical Biochemist in the Division of Biochemistry with the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, The Ottawa Hospital and the Eastern Ontario Regional Laboratory Association (E ORLA). Dr. Booth directs the Immunology and Neurobiomarkers Section of the EORLA regional laboratory and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Ottawa. He is also the Medical Laboratory Director and/or Clinical Biochemistry consultant for various community hospitals in the Eastern Ontario region.

Dr Booth has been a member of various Clinical Biochemistry National and International committees over the years including, International Federation of Clinical Chemistry (IFCC) Harmonisation of Interpretive Comments EQA (WG-ICQA), the Sub-group for harmonisation of reporting of protein electrophoresis and serum free light chains and quantification of small monoclonal proteins. He is the founder and chair of the Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists Monoclonal Gammopathy Working Group (MGWG) and chair of the Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists Monoclonal Gammopathy Interest Group (MGIG). Dr. Booth is on the Executive Committee of the Autoantibody Network and has served as an Expert Member of the Health Technology Expert Review Panel (HTERP) with The Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH).

Dr. Booth sits on the Institute for Quality Management in Healthcare (IQMH) Endocrinology & Immunology Committee having served on the committee for 13 years as a member, vice-chair, and now current chair.

Dr Booth has been active in both the Ontario Society of Clinical Chemists (OSCC) and the Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists (CSCC). From 2007 to 2021 he served as Councilor, President-Elect, President and PastPresident of the OSCC and from 2008 to 2014 as Treasurer of the CSCC. During his term of office as CSCC Treasurer, Ron gathered all of the CSCC investments, which were spread among various banks and investment houses, and consolidated everything in one place. This allowed for more effective tracking, proper diversification, and streamlined record keeping of the CSCC assets.

Dr. Booth is also an active teacher and researcher. He is the course coordinator of an undergraduate course on Pathological Chemistry and is involved in training residents. Dr Booth’s Clinical research interests include diagnostic immunology and autoimmunity, neurobiomarkers and evidence-based utilization of clinical laboratory biomarkers.

Dr. Booth is Associate Editor on the Clinical Biochemistry Journal Editorial Board and reviewer for American Heart Journal, Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Canadian Medical Association Journal, Critical Reviews in Laboratory Science, Journal of Rheumatology, Annals of Clinical Biochemistry, Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine.

Dr. Booth was the 2009 Recipient of the Daniel J Campbell Award for Excellence in Clinical Biochemistry.

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The CSCC is pleased to award the 2022 Award for Innovation in Laboratory Medicine, sponsored by Roche Diagnostics, to the CSCC Point-of-Care Testing (POCT) Special Interest Group.

The point of care testing (POCT) special interest group (SIG) of the CSCC was first established in 2014. The special interest group is made up of many dedicated members and because of their committed efforts, the group was able to publish a position statement on POCT on behalf of the CSCC in 2018 [1]. Following this publication, the group began work on a guidance document on quality assurance practices for POCT. This was published in 2021 [2] and serves as an important resource for the oversight of POCT.

A sub-group of POCT SIG members, under the leadership of Dr. Angela Fung, has been formed to address concerns and provide recommendations for intrapartum fetal scalp lactate testing. This group has been successful in publishing recommendations in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of Canada [3].

The POCT SIG is currently collaborating with the CSCC Quality Indicator SIG to develop and track quality indicators for POCT, with the aim of providing consensus guidance on quality indicators for POCT. Another collaborative project between the CSCC, AACC critical and POCT Division and American Diabetes Association is being led by the POCT SIG. This project is aimed at developing consensus guidelines for the use of continuous glucose monitors in hospitalized patients.

Thank you to all members of the POCT SIG, past and present, who have contributed to these initiatives. Paul Yip Michael Knauer Allison Venner Angela Fung Jennifer Shea James Dalton Anna Fuezery Mathieu Provencal Yun Huang Lyne Massicotte Lori Beach Nicolas Tetreault Julie Shaw, Chair POCT SIG

References: 1. Yip PM, Venner AA, Shea J, Fuezery A, Huang Y, Massicotte L, Tetreault N, Tomalty C and Shaw JLV. Point-of-care testing: A position statement from the Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists. Clinical Biochemistry. 2018;53:156-159. 2. Venner AA, Beach LA, Shea JL, Knauer MJ, Huang Y, Fung AWS, Dalton J, Provencal M and Shaw JLV. Quality assurance practices for point of care testing programs: Recommendations by the Canadian society of clinical chemists point of care testing interest group. Clinical Biochemistry. 2021;88:11-17. 3. Fung AWS, Mattman A, Wang L, Burton T, Beach LA, Fuezery AK, CSCC Point of Care Testing Interest group. Intrapartum Fetal Scalp Lactate Testing: Considerations for Implementation and Clinical Decision Making. Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of Canada. 2021;43(11):1244-1246.

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The CSCC is pleased to award the 2022 award for Research Excellence sponsored by Ortho Clinical Diagnostics to Dr. Mari L. DeMarco

Mari DeMarco, PhD, DABCC, FAACC, FCACB, is a Clinical Chemist at Providence Health Care, the Research Director of Providence Research, and a Clinical Associate Professor in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver Canada. Dr. DeMarco completed her PhD in the Biomolecular Structure and Design program at the University of Washington, and a clinical chemistry fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine.

As a Clinical Chemist, Dr. DeMarco has input into all aspects of the clinical chemistry laboratory and is a major voice in all clinical chemistry test decision making whether the testing pertains to routine chemistry, immunoassay, electrophoresis, or mass spectrometry. She takes responsibility for determining the need for new testing and its implementation, interpretation, and quality monitoring.

Dr DeMarco’s strong research interest is in bridging protein biochemistry and analytical chemistry her research group focuses on building new biofluid tests for direct translation into patient care (www.DeMarcoLab.ca). Biomarker projects in the DeMarco group are driven by clinical demand, that is, they work collaboratively with health care providers and patients to build biofluid diagnostics to fill unmet needs in medicine. While the group uses a variety of techniques to solve biomarker-related challenges in medicine, their specialty is clinical mass spectrometry.

Important contributions of her research group include streamlining proteomic workflows to enable implementation by clinical labs. A major obstacle to the uptake of mass spec workflows for quantification of peptide and protein biomarkers in a clinical setting had been the laborious and lengthy sample preparation protocols. The DeMarco group’s early contributions re-evaluated the status quo for clinical proteomics workflows, yielding simple and rapid workflows suitable for use in clinical lab environments. The knowledge gained through this work enable important contributions to the first Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute guideline on quantitative protein mass spectrometry; guidelines which are used by the regulatory agencies in the approval process for new in vitro diagnostic tests.

A particular area of interest for her research group is in advancing protein-based clinical diagnostics for neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia and Lewy body dementia. The goal of this program of research is to ensure that new biomarker tools make the challenging jump from research into healthcare. As an example, Dr. DeMarco is the Principal Investigator of a Canadawide study investigating the impact of Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers in routine care (www.impactAD.org) – a major outcome of which was the launch of the national Alzheimer’s disease biomarker testing program which provides access to medical testing for the core Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers to physicians across Canada.

Reflecting her group’s research accomplishments, Dr. DeMarco is the recipient of the University of British Columbia’s Early Career Excellence in Research and Discovery, the American Association of Clinical Chemist’s Outstanding Scientific Achievements by a Young Investigator award, and the Association for Mass Spectrometry and Advances in the Clinical Lab’s Michael S. Bereman Award for Innovative Clinical Proteomics.

The Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists is pleased to present the CSCC Award for Education Excellence, sponsored by Beckman Coulter, to Dr. Vathany Kulasingam.

Dr. Vathany Kulasingam is currently the Division Head of Clinical Biochemistry at University Health Network and an Associate Professor and Member of the Graduate Faculty of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto.

Dr. Kulasingam is the Co-Director of the University of Toronto’s Postdoctoral training program in Clinical Chemistry. Since starting at University Health Network in 2010, Dr. Kulasingam has trained over 27 Clinical Chemistry post-doctoral fellows. She actively leads tutorial sessions on mass spectrometry, tumor markers and point-of-care testing and participates in the program’s journal club discussions. She also leads weekly 3-hr teaching sessions with the first year fellows for 6 months of the year broadly covering areas such as autoimmune diagnostics, proficiency testing and quality control. More recently, she has engaged UHN’s physicians to provide clinical perspective teaching sessions on laboratory test ordering. In her clinical capacity in overseeing the Immunology Laboratory at UHN, Dr. Kulasingam has trained over 25 Hematology residents and myeloma fellows in the area of laboratory testing as it relates to multiple myeloma work-up. She is active in the Hematopathology academic half day pilot program for the province. Dr. Kulasingam has also designed, developed and currently coordinates a graduate course, (LMP1207H: Proteomics, Mass Spectrometry and their Clinical Applications), covering the fundamentals of modern mass spectrometry and its use with biochemical techniques to provide unique analyses of proteins and small molecules, bioinformatics, proteomics, and research and clinical applications of this technology. This course was nominated for the 2021 John B. Walter Prize for Course & Curriculum Design & Development which recognizes outstanding contributions by any member of LMP to the design, development, co-ordination, or administration of any course or curriculum in the Faculty of Medicine. She has also lectured at several different graduate and undergraduate courses at the University of Toronto and at The Michener Institute of Education.

Dr. Kulasingam is a Member of the University of Toronto graduate school and has completed the supervision of two PhD Theses and have been on thesis advisory committees of over 20 students.

Besides actively teaching in all areas of education at the University of Toronto, Dr. Kulasingam is also active in international education – whether this is in the form of invited lectures, creating learning modules for the European Federation of Clinical chemistry and Lab medicine syllabus course or having observership programs for international trained medical residents and clinical chemistry fellows. Besides education, her research interests include using high-throughput “omics” technologies to understand disease pathogenesis, with a particular emphasis on cancer and rheumatic diseases and its application to clinical practice.

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CACB is pleased and honored to announce that Dr. Cheryl Tomalty will be receiving the 2022 CACB Award for Outstanding Service to the Profession of Clinical Biochemistry. This award recognizes an individual who has made unique and significant contributions to laboratory medicine and has had a global impact on clinical medicine.

Cheryl became interested in a career in Clinical Biochemistry during her first year in the B.Sc. Program at McGill University in 1969. She met a fellow student, Michelle Francoeur, who invited her to a family dinner one day. Michelle’s father, Dr. Marc Francoeur, was a Clinical Chemist at Hôpital St Luc and Cheryl became fascinated by the combination of chemistry, biology, and medical science that Dr. Francoeur described as involved in his work. After obtaining a B.Sc. in Biochemistry in 1974, she was accepted into a PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Ottawa in 1979. That year she was accepted into the Post-doctoral Clinical Chemistry Training Program at the University of Toronto, graduating with a Diploma in 1981. She was then hired as the first Clinical Biochemist at the North York General Hospital. She received her certification in Clinical Biochemistry from the Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists (CSCC) in 1982. In 1984, the Canadian Academy of Clinical Biochemistry (CACB) came into being and she became a Founding Fellow of the CACB.

Cheryl joined Douglass Medical Laboratory (now owned by Dynacare Medical Labs) in Ottawa in 1985 as a Clinical Chemist and was later appointed as Technical Director of Chemistry and Hematology. In 1994, she became the Laboratory Coordinator of the Montreal General Hospital responsible for administration of all the clinical laboratories, and she went on to lead the laboratory integration team of the three hospitals of the McGill University Health Centre. She then returned to Ottawa in 2000 as a Clinical Chemist with Abbott Point of Care, manufacturer of the i-STAT System, located in Ottawa. This position allowed her to connect with users worldwide in the proper usage and in the resolution of issues that arose. Cheryl’s fifth and final position began in 2007 when she joined LifeLabs Burnaby Reference Laboratory in BC in November 2007 as a Clinical Biochemist. She retired on March 4, 2022, after over 40 years in the clinical biochemistry laboratory scene.

Cheryl was particularly focused on service in the clinical laboratories, but she also contributed her time to professional organizations, provincial committees, and teaching. In the early 80’s, Dr. Lynn Allen encouraged her to become a member of the CSCC Maintenance of Competency program, the precursor to the CACB PD program. Member submissions were reviewed and evaluated manually at that time. Cheryl was an Executive Council Member of the Ontario Society of Clinical Chemists (OSCC) from 2001- 2003, Vice-President from 2003-2005, and President of the from 2005-2007. She became a member of the CACB Board in 2011-2014 overseeing the applications for Fellowship and then Chair of the CACB from 2015-2017. From 2008 to 2014, she was one of the Associate Editors of the CSCC News. Cheryl was invited to become a member of the Chemistry and Point of Care Testing Advisory Committee of the BC Diagnostic Accreditation Program (DAP), the agency that oversees the clinical laboratory regulations and accreditation on behalf of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC. From 2012-2014, she and other provincial colleagues revamped the accreditation standards for the chemistry and POCT devices in terms of QC requirements, maintenance of competency, critical result reporting, and troubleshooting. Cheryl holds an appointment as Clinical Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UBC. She has taught several topics in clinical biochemistry, including carbohydrate metabolism, hypoglycaemia, immunoprecipitation techniques, and protein analysis methods in the 4th year B.Sc. Medical Laboratory Science program every year since 2009. She is particularly proud of her students, some of whom joined LifeLabs and others who were accepted into medical and dental school programs.

Some of her most satisfying accomplishments are projects that involved methodology and instrumentation changes along with introduction of the Fecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) in BC as part of the implementation of the BC Cancer Colon Screening Program. She was a member of the BC Clinical and Support Services FIT Working Group and the FIT Technical Advisory Group. In the latter group she collaborated with Medical and Laboratory technical experts in enhancing and providing oversight of the provincial FIT Quality Assurance Program. LifeLabs is currently the only provider of FIT testing for the BC Cancer Colon Screening Program.

Cheryl is the co-author of two recent peer-reviewed publications: Clinical Biochemistry 51 (2018) 10-20, which provides recommendations for protein electrophoresis reporting from the CSCC Monoclonal Gammopathy Working Group and a review in Clinical Biochemistry 53 (2018) 156-159, which is a position statement from the CSCC on POCT.