BNGO - Bionano's Symposium 2024 Featured Presentations from its Global User Community Highlighting OGM as a Powerful Alternative to Classical Cytogenetics and Strong Complement to NGS | Benzinga
- Over 2,100 registrants with attendees from 92 countries
- Average daily attendance of 574
- 32 oral presentations delivered across four consecutive days
- 69 scientific posters featuring optical genome mapping (OGM) on view in the online exhibit hall
- Content covered wide a range of research applications for OGM including hematologic malignancies, cell and gene therapy, and constitutional genetic diseases
- On-demand presentations from Symposium available for remainder of 2024
SAN DIEGO, Jan. 30, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bionano Genomics, Inc. (BNGO) today announced the conclusion of Bionano's 2024 Symposium, the quintessential event for the optical genome mapping (OGM) community, which was held January 22-25, 2024, and featured a record 32 oral presentations and 69 scientific posters from genomic scientists at leading institutions, including Brigham and Women's Hospital, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Institute Curie, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Symposium had over 2,100 registrants from 92 countries and averaged 574 attendees per day. During this four-day online event, presenters reported on their use of OGM for applications in cancer, genetic disease, and cell and gene therapy.
Symposium 2024's Defining Themes
Presentations delivered by researchers from across the globe highlighted the following themes:
- OGM has moved beyond concordance studies as data sets expand, research reveals new, actionable biomarkers, and user groups form to drive standardization and implementation of the workflow.
- Insights that OGM is providing in hematological malignancy research are relevant in the context of applications to potential therapeutic development and maybe even one day patient management.
- OGM is helping to unravel persistent, complex mysteries in genetic disease that impact people, even in more common disorders like Down syndrome and Marfan syndrome.
- OGM has the potential to meet the key requirements of the cell and gene therapy community.
- OGM can serve as an alternative to, and an important bridge between, cytogenetics and molecular pathology by elevating something that is digital and molecular and complementing next-generation sequencing (NGS) which is an essential component of molecular pathology today.
"We were impressed by the engagement at our 2024 Symposium and are excited by the accomplishments of the global researchers who presented their OGM data during sessions and in scientific posters," commented Alka Chaubey, PhD, FACMG, chief medical officer at Bionano. "OGM's ability to identify pathogenic variants missed by many legacy techniques was highlighted in multiple presentations, including a presentation from day three, covering a research study that used OGM to successfully detect a repeat expansion missed by conventional cytogenetic methods over 15 years of analysis. Presenters also showcased OGM's expansion into new application areas, where it has potential to outperform classical techniques, complement sequencing-based methods, and broaden researchers' understanding of genomic landscapes."
Research shared over the four-day virtual event expanded on key findings in several applications of OGM:
Day 1: New Standards in Hematologic Malignancies
- OGM can provide researchers with a simple, easy to implement workflow: Tiffany Clouston from Saint John Regional Hospital highlighted increasing demand for cytogenetics combined with limited staffing and training resources as a driver for her lab's adoption of OGM, with sample preparation kits that are easy to use, and a sample-to-answer workflow that delivers whole genome structural variant (SV) analysis at high resolution, improving turnaround time.
- OGM can perform comparably to classical cytogenetics and can enable detection of additional pathogenic variants: Dr. Guilin Tang from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center described results from a study on 28 T-lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) samples that showed that OGM detected SVs in 100% of samples, even those with normal karyotype, and revealed additional, clinically relevant information in 56% of samples.
- International consortia have formed all over the world and they are establishing guidelines for standardized implementation of OGM and reporting of OGM data: Agnes Daudignon from Lille Hospital and Dr. Adam Smith from University of Toronto described two different consortia, a French group of OGM users called FrOGG, and the International Consortium for Hematologic Malignancies, which have formed to help members validate, implement and standardize OGM, fueling its expansion into new labs.
Day 2: New Frontiers in Oncology
- OGM has the potential to impact therapy selection and cancer risk assessment and to expand the understanding of heme malignancy applications compared to sequencing and classical cytogenetic methods: Dr. Isabelle Raymond-Bouchard from Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital presented results from a study that used OGM to analyze 50 multiple myeloma (MM) samples, showing that OGM was highly concordant with classical cytogenetic methods and identified variants that led to a 30% increase in prognostic information, which may result in improved therapy selection. Dr. Scott Ryall from Brigham and Women's Hospital also highlighted OGM's impact on MM research, with findings that showed the workflow's ability to detect clinically relevant SVs and to expand the understanding of the structural landscape of myeloma.
- OGM can identify clinically relevant SVs missed by traditional methods: A study presented by Dr. Miriam Bornhorst from Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago showed that OGM was able to detect 20% ...