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Day 1 // Breakout 2:

New developments in

Renaud Louis

Renaud Louis (Chairman)

University of Liège, BE

Curriculum vitae

Renaud LOUIS was born in Liege (Luik) in 1963. He was graduated as Doctor in Medicine from University of Liege in 1987 and as Specialist in Respiratory Medicine in 1993 from the same University. Then he trained as Research Fellow at Southampton University (UK) from 1994 to 1996 in the department of Prof Steve Holgate. He obtained his Aggregation of superior teaching at the University of Liege in 1998 with a research thesis entitled "Contribution to study of bronchial hyperresponsiveness and airways inflammation in atopic asthmatic" and a public lesson dedicated to "COPD". He got a permanent position as member of the Pneumology Staff at CHU sart-Tilman in 1998. He was appointed by University of Liege as Associate Professor in Respiratory Medicine in 2000. In 2003 he was invited by Prof Miel Wouters, Head of the Respiratory Medicine Department at Maastricht University, to join the team for one year on a part-time basis as visiting Professor. He was appointed full Professor of Respiratory Medicine and Head of the department of Respiratory Disease in 2004. He also was president of the Belgian Thoracic Society from 2012 to 2014 and served as European respiratory Official from 1998- 2003 and as national delegate from 2005-2008. His current research interest is focused on airways inflammation in asthma and COPD and is member of the GINA (Global Initiative for Asthma) assembly.

13:30 - Cancer localization by dynamic contrast-enhanced imaging

Massimo Mischi

Eindhoven University of Technology, NL

13:50 - Application of MALDI - TOF Technology in the pathology

Jörg Kriegsmann

University of Trier, DE

14:10 - Pitches:

Birgitta Stolze

LLS ROWIAK LaserLabSolutions GmbH, DE

Michael Rose

Qithera GmbH, DE

Bart Jacobs

UC Leuven Limburg, center of expertise iTech, BE

Oliver Bannach

Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, DE

Marc Ramael

AZ Herentals, BE

Hans Hofstraat

14:25 - Definitive Diagnostic - Future of Cancer Care

Hans Hofstraat

Philips Healthcare, NL

Florence Schleich

14:45 - Exhaled volatile organic compounds are able to discriminate between neutrophilic and eosinophilic asthma

Florence Schleich

GIGA, CHU Liège, BE

Curriculum vitae

PhD, thesis entitled «Clinical interest of airway inflammatory markers », December 2014.
6thComplementary Master in Pulmonology, 2011, University of Liege (ULg), Belgium : graduated with highest honours. Chest physician in CHU of Liege.
From October 2010 to February 2012: Lab research and Clinical activity in University of Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Since 2008: Member of I³GIGA Lab, University of Liege.
Secretary of ERS Group - 05.02 - Monitoring Airway Disease from September 2016 to September 2019.
ERS junior national deleguate for Belgium 2014.
Member of the European Respiratory Society, ERS Assembly 5.2.
Member of the Belgian Society of Pulmonology.
Member of the American Thoracic Society.

Author or co-author of more than 40 publications in the field of asthma and COPD

Awards and Fellowship :
-    FIRS 2013 CHU SartTilman Liege. Thermoplasty in severe paucigranulocutic asthma.
-    GSK Clinical Science Award in Pneumology 2013.
-    Pfizer Educational Grant, 2011.
-    Belgian Respiratory Society Short-Term Fellowship, 2011.
-    European Respiratory Society Short-Term Training Fellowship application 2011. Ref Number STRTF 80-2011.

Abstract

VOC are able to discriminate between asthma inflammatory phenotypes and to identify neutrophilic asthma.
Schleich F1, Bessonov K2, Smolinska A3, Dallinga J3, Henket M1, Wouters E4, Van Steen K2, Van Schooten FJ3, Louis R1.
1 Respiratory Medicine, GIGA I3, CHU Sart-Tilman B35, 4000 Liege, Belgium. 2 , ³ Bioinformatics and Modeling, GIGA-R, University of Liege, 4000 Sart-Tilman, Belgium. 3Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, School for Nutrition and Translational Research in Metabolism (NUTRIM), Maastricht University, The Netherlands, 4 Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Maastricht University Medical Center (MUMC+), The Netherlands.

Body: Oxidative stress generates volatile organic compounds (VOCs) excreted in exhaled air. Induced sputum is currently the best available noninvasive assessment of bronchial inflammation in asthma and we currently lack of markers for airway neutrophilia.
The purpose of the study was to examine whether specific VOCs are associated with eosinophilic and neutrophilic inflammation for noninvasive monitoring of asthma inflammatory phenotypes.
Methods

This is a prospective study on 276 asthmatics recruited from the asthma clinic of CHU Liege between 2010 and 2014. Patient underwent VOCs measurement by GCMS analysis, FENO, spirometry with bronchodilation, sputum induction, blood sample and validated asthma control and quality of life questionnaires. One week later, a methacholine challenge was performed. We used conditional inference forests (CIFs) to rank features based on the ability of components to predict phenotypes.The chemical nature of the compounds was found in NIST Library.

Results

3328 VOCs were detected in the exhaled air from eosinophilic (eos≥3%, n=122), neutrophilic (neutro≥76%, n=50) and paucigranulocytic (n=90) asthmatics. We filtered out components that were detected in <30 samples. When comparing VOCs from paucigranuloctytic to eosinophilic asthma, 3 components (P337, P903, P923) were good discriminators. We found that P2622 and P2853 were VOCs able to distinguish between neutrophilic and paucigranulocytic while peak 253 and 1913 were best for eosinophilic versus neutrophilic discrimination.
Our study is the first attempt to characterize VOCs according to sputum inflammatory phenotypes in a large asthmatic population. Our results show that VOCs analysis may be a valuable method to phenotype asthmatics.

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