On Tuesday, Aug. 25, the Midcoast Lyme Disease Support & Education (MLDSE) will be holding its Wiscasset Lyme support meeting at the Wiscasset Municipal Building (police/fire station) in the Community Room from 6-8 p.m. (as the Wiscasset Community Center will be closed for maintenance). Bob Giguere from Igenex will be the guest speaker.

After receiving his bachelor's degree from Providence College, Giguere worked at Collaborative Research for over 5 years during which time he received molecular biology training at David Botstein's laboratory at MIT. He became the senior vice president/COO at Boston Biomedical Clinical Laboratory in Connecticut and directed this microbiology and infectious diseases esoteric laboratory through the 1990s.

He joined IGeneX in 2005 as the director of sales, and has spent the last 9 years speaking not only to medical providers and patient support groups, but also has been invited to speak on Lyme and co-infection testing at medical schools and conferences throughout the United States.

Igenex, located in Palo Alto, California, is the leading reference laboratory specializing in state-of-the-art clinical and research testing for Lyme disease and associate tick-borne diseases and has been for over 20 years. They are a specialty immunology laboratory and research facility, providing personalized service to over 1,000 private practice physicians, hospitals, and other clinical reference laboratories throughout the U.S. and Canada. The laboratory also functions as a pilot site for diagnostic manufacturers in the introduction of new assays, and has extensive collaborative agreements with multiple research groups. The Reference Laboratory, founded in 1983, was purchased from 3M Diagnostic Systems (3MDS-Santa Clara, CA and BioWhittaker, Walkersville, MD) in 1991 by IGeneX and moved to Palo Alto, California. The laboratory is CLIA-certified, inspected by the Department of Health and Human Services.

MLDSE is a nonprofit organization that raises awareness, fosters education, advocates for change and provides community support across the Midcoast Region of Maine with support groups in Brunswick, Rockport and Wiscasset.

For more information about this meeting or MLDSE, contact Paula Jackson Jones 207-446-6447 or Angele Rice 207-841-8757 or visit  www.midcoastlymediseasesupport.blogspot.com.