CLN Daily
As laboratorians know, routine blood collection is a cornerstone of clinical diagnostics. At the same time, both patients and clinicians have expressed an eagerness for less invasive sample-collection methods, which have the potential to increase patient access to diagnostic testing. Yet many laboratories struggle when it comes to evaluating and safely implementing alternative matrices.
Thursday’s scientific session, “Beyond blood: The frontier of noninvasive fluid diagnostics,” will deal with this gap. By exploring examples of non-standard body-fluid requests, as well as the innovations driving the non-invasive matrices of tomorrow, the expert panel hopes to equip laboratory professionals with the tools they need for future fluid analysis.
With the rise of patient self-collection and novel devices, laboratory medicine is actively expanding its purview beyond traditional specimens like blood from venipuncture. But laboratorians need a clear roadmap for what comes next, according to session moderator Steven Cotten, PhD, DABCC, NRCC, FADLM.
“Remote sampling and novel specimen types like saliva and other matrices represent a new frontier,” Cotten said. He wants ADLM 2026 attendees to gain a better understanding of the limitations, challenges, and opportunities these advances bring to the field.
In her presentation, Darci Block, PhD, DABCC, a clinical chemist at Mayo Clinic who specializes in body-fluid testing, will utilize real-world cases as part of an interactive discussion with participants. She plans to provide attendees with a “framework for how to approach these alternate matrices in a safe and effective manner to contribute meaningfully to improved patient outcomes.”
Noting that body fluid has been “a staple of laboratory-based diagnostic testing for decades because it represents localized pathology,” Block believes the shift toward patient-centric, non-invasive collection methods is a prime opportunity for innovation.
For example, she will discuss potential implications for population-based screening if venipuncture is no longer required for specimen collection. She will also describe some of the unique challenges that come with testing other fluids, both from an analytical and implementation perspective.
Chamindie Punyadeera, PhD, who leads the salivary diagnostics and liquid-biopsy laboratory at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, will close the session with a discussion of her pioneering research into saliva and other non-invasive fluid-testing modalities.
To bridge the gap between research and clinical practice, Punyadeera will walk attendees through saliva-collection methods and some of the requirements for translating these diagnostics into actionable tools. She will also cover current hurdles, including limited sensitivity and specificity for early-stage disease detection, biomarker variability across populations, and the complexities of integrating multi-“omics” data.
Despite these challenges, Punyadeera is optimistic attendees will gain an appreciation for how transformative these approaches can be for both patients and clinicians. “I hope people leave with an understanding that these technologies are not just futuristic,” she said. “They are rapidly becoming clinically relevant.”