iSpecimen Inc. (Nasdaq: ISPC) ("iSpecimen" or the "Company"), an online marketplace for human biospecimens, today announced that it has been contracted to support new advanced research on COVID-19 seeking insights on its transmissibility, variants, outcomes, and testing validity among multiple population segments. In the last ten months, the company has partnered with multiple research and health care organizations on a range of diverse projects requiring a variety of COVID-19 samples, including nasal swabs, saliva, and blood products.
The Company's work on COVID-19 began immediately after the outbreak last year when it began sending serum samples to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help researchers monitor antibody development for possible guidance on immunity. iSpecimen provided the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ("CDC") with 600 SARS-CoV-2-positive serum samples and 100 negative serum samples, mostly remnants from lab tests.
In addition, iSpecimen has been contracted by other federal agencies and private companies for custom COVID-19 collections, which are often complex and complement the more immediate availability of remnant or banked samples.
"COVID-19 has claimed more than 5 million lives, and it will require a lot of additional research to control the pandemic and improve society's ability to contend with future outbreaks of infectious diseases," said iSpecimen Founder and CEO, Christopher Ianelli, MD, Ph.D. "We embrace the challenge and are gratified that researchers are coming to us for the specific biospecimens they need from the types of patients they're focusing on."
COVID-Related Research
In addition to the work iSpecimen has done with the CDC, iSpecimen has recently supplied hundreds of human biospecimens to ongoing COVID-19 research being conducted by the United States military. The specimens, including positive SARS-CoV-2 samples and negative controls, help researchers validate COVID-19 testing platforms, understand fluctuations in patients' antibody levels, monitor contagion among close contacts, and more.
Another project organized by iSpecimen involves subjects who are undergoing a COVID-19 test, along with their relatives, household members, or other contacts with whom they interact. If any additional subject develops COVID-like symptoms over the following two weeks after the first subject was tested, the second subject can schedule a follow-up blood collection for analysis.
In yet another project, blood samples are being collected from symptomatic patients who have tested positive for COVID-19, with many of those same patients returning two months later as part of a longitudinal study of how their biology, including antibody levels, have changed.
Samples are often collected across a range of geographies and reflect a variety of ages, races, and ethnicities. In some cases, samples are genetically sequenced to identify variants. In support of research projects that require a stream of different sample types from each research subject, as many as 21 specimens have been collected and delivered from individuals in recruited cohorts, including nasal swabs, oral swabs, saliva, and blood products in various forms and quantities.
In related news, iSpecimen recently enlisted a new partner to provide researchers with swabs and biofluid samples that have been genetically sequenced and categorized by SARS-CoV-2 variant.
Access COVID-19 specimens at iSpecimen here.
About iSpecimen
iSpecimen offers an online marketplace for human biospecimens, connecting life scientists in commercial and non-profit organizations with healthcare providers that have access to patients and specimens needed for medical discovery. Proprietary, cloud-based technology enables scientists to intuitively search for specimens and patients across a federated partner network of hospitals, labs, biobanks, blood centers, and other healthcare organizations. For more information about iSpecimen, please visit www.ispecimen.com.
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