The 5th International Meeting on Cell-Free DNA, cfDNA2023, Denmark, May 2023
In the field of cell-free DNA testing, the cfDNA2023 meeting once again attracted excellent speakers who presented the audience with new insights into cell-free DNA testing and its clinical applications across several subfields. These fields included transfusion medicine, cancer diagnostics, prenatal diagnosis, and transplantation. Topics included noninvasive prenatal testing of fetal antigens in clinical immunology, noninvasive prenatal testing of fetal aneuploidies, noninvasive monitoring of transplant rejection, and monitoring of cancer.
There were 13 invited talks, 13 short oral presentations from the audience, and more than 20 posters. One scientist was awarded a travel grant, and a poster winner was found by a jury. The meeting was attended by 180 people from 26 different countries. This year, we celebrated the conference’s 10-year anniversary.
Day one of the cfDNA2023 meeting opened with the topic of noninvasive prediction of fetal blood groups covered by Prof. Christoph Gassner, Prof. Masja de Haas, and Prof. Tobias Legler, followed by oral presentations. After a poster session, Prof. Michael Oellerich and Dr. Olivier Aubert covered transplantation monitoring, followed by oral presentations. Day one ended with a talk from Oxford Nanopore Technologies.
First half of day two was focused on cancer diagnostics and biological aspects featuring Prof. Dennis Lo, Prof. Alain Thierry, and Dr. Mark Jesus Magbanua and oral presenters from the audience. The second half of day two covered new findings from non-invasive prenatal diagnosis and testing in the field of prenatal care. The conference ended with Prof. Morten Dziegiel on the topic of RAMAN spectroscopy. We thank all participants for their excellent contribution to the meeting.
In addition to the 2-day conference, we held a special discussion workshop the day before the meeting on the topic of Noninvasive Fetal Antigen Genotyping, arranged by Dr. Åsa Hellberg, where approximately 70 scientists met to discuss methodologies and clinical aspects. This workshop was highly appreciated by the participants. The results from this workshop were presented at the cfDNA Subgroup meeting at the ISBT congress in Gothenburg.
The cfDNA2023 meeting was sponsored by Qiagen, Yourgene Health, Ingenetix, and BeDia Genomics, with eight additional exhibitors. The meeting was further supported by The Center of Diagnosis at the Copenhagen University Hospital, The Danish Society of Clinical Immunology, The Danish Cancer Society, The Danish Society of Clinical Academics, as well as the ISBT.
We sincerely hope that all attendees had a great and educational meeting and found opportunity to discuss science with their international colleagues, and we thank the ISBT for the support.
The Author
