This week ABS is having a meeting of our Advisory Board. Our Advisory Board is composed of experts in a number of disciplines. This upcoming meeting was an inspiration for this topic. It occurred to me that we serve in a similar capacity with many of our clients because we do far more than provide highly customized products and services. We also act as trusted advisors in many areas.
An extension of your laboratory or laboratories has been a tag line of ABS for 32 years. It conveys the essence of our Mission to make discovery faster, easier, and more reliable. In practical terms, ABS is your virtual lab partner, providing you with human biospecimens, cell culture services and services related to the processing, analyses, and storage of biological materials. While this post could elaborate upon the specifics of how our services accelerate the work of our clients, this post focuses on the important difference between laboratory and laboratories in how we advance our clients’ missions.
As with personal relationships, trust is an important factor in business relationships. Basically, you want to be sure that you can count on a business partner to do what they say they are going do and that they will be there for you when you need them. How can one evaluate a business relationship before it is too late?
We are all pressed to get more done with limited resources. New projects are added. Deadlines and deliverables loom over us. There is only so much any of us can do alone. More specifically, we know how much time is taken up with growing cell cultures, finding high quality human tissues that are suitable for biomedical research, or making tissue or cell membrane preparations, etc. All of this must happen before an experiment can even be started.
If you have grown cells or used cells in your research, you know the problems associated growing them and in ensuring that they generate reproducible data. After obtaining or engineering a cell line, master and working banks must be produced. Supplies must be ordered. Technicians must spend hours under the hood. Sterility must be maintained. Cell cultures must be split and fed over and over again. Repeated cell counts and viability measures must be done. Cells must be harvested and aliquoted. The cultures must not contain any Mycoplasma contamination. Cell line IDs should be verified, etc.
Vaccines that protect against COVID-19 infections and illness are readily available to most of the U.S. populations. These vaccines went through an expedited, but rigorous, approval process. They appear to be highly effective and safe. The incidence of side-effects is extremely low. With this efficacy risk profile, there should be little hesitancy in being vaccinated. However, some individuals remain hesitant to receive the vaccines.
Remote working and social distancing can lessen effective communications between individuals and groups. Recently, I heard that a few employees felt that I was not listening to their concerns. Many of us, myself included, may have deficits in listening to and understanding another position and its needs. It is something I continually work on improving.
The COVID pandemic has produced many changes in our society. Far too many have been affected directly by death, lingering illness, and economic devastation. These types of losses overshadow the very real psychological toll the pandemic has taken on those who have gone relatively untouched by loss of friends and loved ones or even a decline in income.
Being a bench scientist working at a company often means that you work at the same bench or laboratory for many years. Maybe you occasionally change laboratories, most likely in the same building. The only way for change is often to change jobs. But does it have to be that way?
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