Tissue donations are essential for biological research. For example, it is impossible to study the biology of a cancerous tumor without a cancerous sample. Sadly, many of the samples that could go to scientists looking for cures instead go into medical waste, which is carted away and incinerated. Unfortunately, even when samples are collected, they are often stored away unused although there are researchers who urgently need them; but the connection is never made.
Neither hospitals, nor patients, can be blamed for this. The treatment of the disease and the well-being of the patient are the primary concerns. Research that may lead to a cure may be a desired goal, but not a focus. This is where ABS helps.
ABS was founded to help scientists obtain the human biological materials that are essential for research and get them to the scientists who desperately need them. Our goal is to provide these samples to researchers in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies who are actively working on treatments that can change lives. Otherwise, research and cures are delayed. We work with a wide range of hospitals across the U.S. and throughout the world to achieve this goal. However, the needs are greater than the supplies that reach researchers.
Then why can’t drug and other therapeutic companies go directly to individual hospitals? Similarly, why can’t hospitals approach these companies directly? The answer is that they can, but that is an extremely ineffective, time-consuming, and laborious process.
Imagine contacting 100 hospitals, each of which may have only a few of the samples of the hundreds that are needed. Then, one must negotiate Material Transfer Agreements with each of these, review Informed Consent Forms for Sample Donation, visit the site, review sample collection procedures, review that sample handling and storage conditions are appropriate for research, manage shipping and logistics of the samples, and reimburse the hospitals for collection and storage costs. This is a mammoth process that must be done exactly right or the samples that donated are useless to scientists.
Conversely, a hospital decides to collect samples for research. The primary goal of the hospital is patient care. Now, to make the collection of donated samples available to researchers, the hospital must somehow find those researchers among many hundreds of pharmaceutical and biotechnology, each studying different diseases (e.g., specific types of cancer) and each with changing needs. This is a full-time endeavor. On top of this, the hospital must negotiate agreements with each of these research groups, host multiple site visits and reviews, handle shipping, logistics, and billing to cover these costs, and answer inquiries from a multitude of parties from companies that are involved in each of these operations.
This is an area where ABS makes a major impact on research. We handled all the above for both researchers and hospitals. This makes the goal of providing scientists with the biological samples that are essential for research much more effective and greatly shortens the path to discovery of new treatments and cures. ABS acts as a single point of contact for scientist seeking cures and the hospitals that wish to accelerate the achievement of this goal. This is why we are in business. In addition, ABS provides a variety of other research services that speed discovery and make it more reliable. For example, ABS can process, analyze, and QC samples for research. We are far more than a sample supply company. We are scientists who want to help make a real difference in people’s lives.
