Many years ago, ABS introduced the concept of an ABS Cell Store™. The basic idea behind this concept is that scientists who use cells in their work want the data from their experiments, but do not want to spend days and often weeks growing, preparing, QC’ing, and banking cells for their experiments. Nevertheless, researchers require high quality cells for their work.
The question is: Should resources and time be put into cell culture or research? The answer is obvious for any organization that is focused on discovery.
For many pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, ABS is the answer. With over 33 years of experience in cell culture services, ABS grows, processes, QC’s, and stores working master cell banks and working cell banks that are ready to use when you want. We can supplement your core facility, or we can be your core facility depending upon your needs.
ABS provides a complete suite of services from cell line engineering, cell growth, Mycoplasma, and sterility testing, ready to use cells, and long-term cell bank storage. We also provide conditioned media, cell membrane preparations, and cell fractions such as mitochondria and cell nuclei. Cell characterization and processing are possible with flow cytometry, cell sorting, Western analyses, and much more on a customized basis. ABS’ logistics team provides shipping worldwide.
Working with ABS is a highly collaborative and customized process. It includes you and our Business Development, Client Services, and Scientific Teams to customize each order. We are continuously improving workflow automation to increase the speed, scalability, and reliability of our cell culture services. This has led us to consider a new initiative that will better serve many of our clients.
Cell culture is a complex and time-consuming process. It doesn’t stop on weekends, and it doesn’t take holidays or vacations. You can’t stop working to have cells ready when you need them. Cells need to be engineered or acquired. Media must be ordered and prepared. Flasks, cell factories, and other supplies must always be on hand. Cells must be thawed, counted, fed, split, counted, fed, split, counted again, and on and on until harvest and QC. Then, they are cryopreserved or processed or further analyzed. To maintain efficient and reliable production, every step must be tracked, documented, and reported in real time. Over the years, ABS has accomplished exactly that. Our system enables us to track every step of cell culture workflow in real time for hundreds of cell culture orders.
Some of you may know that I live in the San Diego area. For many years, I have been able to access the status of your orders from my home office. Now you can have similar secure access. Some of this information is already available to you on your ABS Client Portal. Some of our larger clients also receive more customized and detailed reports or we are linked directly to their electronic notebooks to provide updates.
With this new cell culture initiative, over the coming year, we will make real time access to the status of your orders available to you whenever you want. As you might imagine, there are challenges to making this happen smoothly every time. We are working through those challenges, and in 2024 we will begin providing an enhanced client interface so that you will always know the status of each of your cell lines every step along the way from placing an order to shipping or storage.
Our goal, as from our beginning in 1990, is to be an extension of your laboratory. In the meantime, please contact our Client Services whenever you have a question about your orders. We are there for you.
As mentioned above, cell culture is a difficult and complex process to manage effectively. It can often involve a significant degree of customization for each order. This is a collaborative process. Because we focus on understanding the needs of every client and value the personal interactions that we have with our clients, we have avoided using any type of online store. Personal understanding and attention to your requirements is a cornerstone of what we do for you. However, we are always looking for ways in which we can deliver greater speed and value to you.
Automation and real time access on your computer of the status of your orders is the first phase of this cell culture initiative. However, getting every order right begins before an order is placed.
Whenever you inquire about a cell culture project, we create a Service Request in our system. The Service Request ensures that we have all the details of your order such as cell line, media, seeding densities, passage number, and cryopreservation solution. You can also use our expertise in assisting with your decisions on specifications. Everything for your orders flows automatically through our systems from preparing a price quote, generating a job for our laboratories, beginning your order, to shipping and billing. This limits manual data entries and avoids errors.
We are asking you if there is another way that you would like to interact with ABS in addition to our personalized service. Because we successfully automate all ordering processing with our systems, we are considering something that we thought some of our clients might like. This could speed the entry of information into our system, eliminate some back-and-forth communications, and shorten delivery times. Of course, we will always be with you every step of the way. If this is of interest to you, please let us know and we will keep you informed.
