ICCS COMMITTEE  NEWS & UPDATES
The ICCS is excited to share updates regarding the various committees. Please review the below and feel free to contact us at info@cytometry.org with any questions. 


ADVOCACY COMMITTEE
By Jerry Hussong
The ICCS Advocacy Committee continues to monitor issues of regulation, reimbursement and assay validation.  Since the FDA has decided not to yet issue their final guidance on regulation of Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs), the laboratory community is in a “wait and see” mode.  The new Presidential Administration will be tackling the apparent repeal of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and offer some form of replacement.  It is thought that this will keep the Administration, Congress and FDA busy in the upcoming months to possibly up to 2 years.  Recent information suggests that the new Administration will be interested in the topic of LDT regulation so we expect them to come back to this issue.

The Advocacy Committee continues to evaluate and discuss issues related to flow cytometry reimbursement and the ongoing cuts that are taking effect.  It continues to work with other organizations including the CAP to see if anything can be done to mitigate the ongoing cuts to reimbursement.  This is a challenging topic and the committee would be open to opinions and input from the ICCS membership.

Virginia Litwin and Andy Rawstron continue to work on manuscripts/guidances on flow cytometry assay validation.  Members of the Advocacy Committee and others in the Society have offered input and assistance in this effort.  We anticipate that these manuscripts/guidances will be submitted in 2017.

In addition, the committee has reviewed its membership and is in the process of partial membership change.  New members are being asked to join and a few committee members are completing their rotation on the committee.  This will likely be completed in the next few weeks.

Finally, the committee is interested in the input of the Society regarding which issues they would like the Advocacy Committee to address in the future.  A survey is currently being drafted which will be send to membership for their input upon its completion.



EDUCATION COMMITTEE
By Fiona Craig
The ICCS education committee is pleased to announce a new video for members entitled “Light Chain Assessment” created by Karina Baggiani, Jolene Cardinali and Sindhu Cherian, with assistance in planning by Bakul Dalal.  This video can be found, along with the other educational materials, on the ICCS website www.cytometry.org after logging in, under member services.  The video describes how assessment of for kappa or lambda light chain restriction can assist in identifying a clonal population of B-cells.   The video subcommittee is now working on additional videos that address abnormal B-cell populations.  

Do you ever encounter problems with separating kappa and lambda positive cells?  See how Roberta Montgomery answers the following question in the Cytometry Q&A section on the home page of the ICCS website: “In some cases the B cell kappa and lambda run together and are difficult to separate. How can this be fixed?”  One of the points she raises is adequate washing to remove serum immunoglobulins.  How many washes are sufficient?  Melanie O'Donahue and colleagues report the results of experiments they performed to investigated this question in the Summer 2015 issue of the ICCS newsletter (eICCS-6-3), which can be found in the archive of newsletters in the Member Services section of the website.  For additional information about evaluation of mature B-cells, also view the web presentation by Weina Chen entitled “Flow cytometric immunophenotyping of mature B-cell neoplasms”.   If you still have a question that others might share, please submit to our experts through the Q&A section.


QUALITY & STANDARDS
COMMITTEE
By Andrea Illingworth

The ICCS Quality and Standards committee has been working hard in order to make several more modules available on the ICCS website. We have had positive feedback from our first module on " Lysing Methods and Reagents for Flow cytometric Immunophenotyping" which was posted last month on the ICCC website. Modules currently under review i nclude “Identifying appropriate reagents to assess CD5 expression” and “Instrument Optimization for BC and BD platforms” which should be posted soon. “Reporting of CD5+ Neoplasms” and “Development of performance criteria for antibodies and guide for titration” are next in line.

It has been exciting to develop a focus and project ideas by this international group represented well between ICCS and ESCCA members who all bring various levels of expertise and experience to the group. One of the well-known ESCCA members Andy Rawstron has been actively involved in standardization projects for CLL and MRD testing for a long time and is now looking towards expanding this model into other areas, such as CMML, T-cell malignancies and hairy cell leukemia based on recent surveys. The goal is to include clinicians in order to identify the information needed for optimal patient management and subsequently develop consensus on assay-specific instrumentation setup, reagents, panels and reporting.

The Q&S committee is comprised of 4 groups (instrument optimization, reagents and panels, specimen preparation and reporting) which will address the most common areas of variability in flow cytometry. The information will be presented in peer-reviewed “modules” with the goal to provide the laboratory staff with a practical reference guide in optimizing their procedures.

Thank you for your participation in the ERIC/ESCCA/ICCS survey "p rospective validation of flow cytometry panels for CLL diagnosis and monitoring". The results are now available, please click here to view them.