INTERNATIONAL WORKING GROUP ON THE STANDARDISATION OF GENOME AMPLIFICATION TECHNIQUES (SoGAT) FOR CLINICAL DIAGNOSTICS

The SoGAT working group for the safety testing of blood, tissues and organs for blood-borne pathogens has played an important role in the standardisation of nucleic acid amplification techniques (NAT) for blood safety. Regular meetings of this group have taken place since 1995, and have provided a valuable and unique forum for the development of WHO International Standards and other reference reagents for the standardisation of NAT for blood-borne pathogens. At the 20 th SoGAT meeting, held on 12 th -13 th June 2007 in Warsaw, Poland, it was agreed that the knowledge and experience of SoGAT could be applied to other areas of public health, such as the standardisation of NAT assays used in the diagnosis of other clinical pathogens. It was therefore announced that the SoGAT blood safety meeting would be moved to a 2-year cycle, and that a new working group focusing on the standardisation of clinical diagnostics would be established. The first meeting of the SoGAT Clinical Diagnostics working group was held at NIBSC on 24 th 25 th June 2008 and was chaired by Dr Philip Minor (Deputy Director, NIBSC). Presentations from the meeting are available at the following link: www.nibsc.ac.uk/spotlight/sogat.aspx