July 7, 2026
LEAP in Health IT Notice of Funding Opportunity
Transcript
Nick Lanyi
The Feds offer a half million to small independent laboratories, a possible new biomarker for early detection of Alzheimer's, and improving pathology services at a hospital in rural Kenya. These stories and more coming up next. This is Path News Network Daily Edition from the College of American Pathologists. I'm Nick Lanyi. It's Tuesday, July 7th. Small independent laboratories can apply now for up to $500,000 in federal funds aimed at improving data quality and standardizing coding systems. The National Coordinator for Health IT released a notice of funding opportunities for its leading edge acceleration projects, or LEAP. One of the new funding tracks applies to small independent labs. The agency is prioritizing projects that assess data quality and solve data gaps, or help labs adopt standard codes and support transitions away from local codes. They're looking for scalable approaches that align with national laboratory data standards. Applications are due July 16th. Go to healthit.gov for more information. Alzheimer's disease affects more than 55 million people worldwide. Treatment options are limited, and most are ineffective once the disease has progressed. But early detection has also proved challenging, and most methods involve expensive brain scans or invasive spinal taps. A new study published in Nature Communications indicates that a blood-based biomarker could prove effective for early detection in a minimally invasive test. Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Health Center in New York City found that cells released by the brain are detectable in blood and contain RNA signatures that seem to indicate the presence of Alzheimer's. While large clinical trials are needed to validate the results, the finding could represent a breakthrough in the quest to find effective treatments for this deadly disease. The CAP Foundation is offering pathology residents an opportunity to participate in research projects at a leading pharmaceutical company. The Foundation's Clinical Laboratory Science Investigator Award, sponsored by Eli Lilly and Company, provides up to $5,000 for travel and living expenses during a four-week training period at Lilly's Clinical Diagnostics Laboratory in Indianapolis. Residents will work on projects aimed at improving the discovery, quality, and delivery of novel biomarker assays for use in clinical studies. The training will take place in 2027. The application period opened on July 1st and runs through October 23rd. For more information, visit the CAP Foundation website at foundation.cap.org. And finally, an inspiring story about a program in rural Kijabe, Kenya, where mortality rates for breast cancer remain high. It's the subject of an upcoming CAP Foundation webinar. We spoke with one of the presenters, Dr. Rondi Kauffmann, a surgical oncologist at Vanderbilt Health in Nashville, Tennessee, who also holds a faculty position at Kijabe Hospital in Kijabe, Kenya, about an hour outside of Nairobi. She was part of a collaboration to improve breast cancer treatment there, but it hit a snag.
Dr. Rondi Kauffmann
When we give chemotherapy in the neoadjuvant setting for breast cancer here in the United States, when that patient goes and gets their surgery, part of the pathology report is actually quantifying how much response there has been to chemo and how much residual cancer remains. That's the RCB score, residual cancer burden. And that number, that score, is very important for guiding decisions about additional treatment as well as providing the patient with a prognosis because the better your response to chemo, the lower your risk of recurrence in the future. So we wanted to be able to do that same type of analysis and that same type of reporting in Kenya at Kijabe Hospital.
Nick Lanyi
The problem? Kijabe lacked equipment and training to do immunohistochemistry stains.
Dr. Rondi Kauffmann
All of those tissues had to be sent to Nairobi to a different lab. That resulted in delays in getting the results back. There was an additional cost associated with having those tissues sent to Nairobi. And so we asked, well, could we perhaps increase Kijabe Hospital's capacity in their pathology department by finding a grant that would allow us to purchase equipment for immunohistochemistry staining and then train the lab techs at Kijabe Hospital in how to do immunohistochemistry? So that's really where the CAP Foundation grant came in is by providing those resources that allowed us to purchase that equipment, train the staff at Kijabe Hospital. So now Kijabe can do all of its own immunohistochemistry staining in-house. That results in much faster turnaround time to get the results. It's a much lower cost to the patient. I mean, I think what is really impactful about this type of program is that it's not just about providing the pathology services for a specific project or even for a specific group of patients, but it's about really building institutional capacity. And that is much more sustainable and much more impactful in the long term. Because when you invest in resourcing an institution and you invest in equipping the healthcare workforce with knowledge, that's something that that lasts.
Nick Lanyi
Dr. Kauffmann's co-presenter will be Dr. Rosemary Kamau, the longtime head pathologist at Kijabe Hospital.
Dr. Rondi Kauffmann
To really hear what they're doing and the impact that that hospital and that program is having on the ground in the community, I think is is really, really uh wonderful. And I'm excited to hear what she has to say.
Nick Lanyi
The CAP Foundation webinar about the project is scheduled for Friday, July 17th at 8 a.m. Central Time. To register, go to foundation.cap.org. That's all for today. See the show notes for more information on today's stories. And if you've got a story to share, write us at stories atc.org. We'll be back Wednesday at 5 a.m. Eastern for another episode of the Daily Edition. I'm Nick Lanyi. Have a wonderful day.