Dr. Susan Poutanen is a Medical Microbiologist and Infectious Diseases Physician at Sinai Health & University Health Network in Toronto, Canada and an Associate Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology and Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr. Poutanen received her Medical Degree from the University of Toronto in 1996 and completed Internal Medicine and Medical Microbiology Residencies at the University of Toronto and an Infectious Diseases Fellowship at Stanford University, California. She received her Masters of Public Health with a focus on Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002. Her broad research interests include: the diagnosis of and preparedness for emerging infectious diseases including SARS-CoV-2; and the optimization of microbiology laboratory practices using point-of-care tests, rapid diagnostics, automation, and artificial intelligence. Dr. Poutanen sits on the Advisory Committee for the Rogers Hixon Ontario Human Milk Bank and co-led with Drs. Deborah O’Connor and Sharon Unger the validation two commercial assays for the study of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in human milk.
Studying the potential antiviral components in human breast milks, especially the presence and role of human milk antibodies became a focus of human milk banks early on the COVID-19 pandemic. Laboratory developed assays and commercial assays were developed in parallel. Given the urgency for results, robust validation of assays before initiating testing was not uniformly completed. By the end of this session, you should be able to: 1) describe the importance of validating assays before initiating testing 2) review the steps involved in validating an antibody test 3) describe the results of a validation of a commercial SARS-CoV-2 IgA IgG assay on human breast milk