Company Blog

In recent posts, I’ve pointed out the tangible threats to preserving your valuable biological specimens and the many hidden costs of managing sample inventories. With the high stakes of supporting years of research, regulatory compliance and the immeasurable value of assets stored in biorepositories, we think the research community needs the most robust sample management systems available.  That is why BioTillion has developed... Read more

Roni
Or
Wednesday, May 18, 2016 - 12:52

If you are involved with managing the operation of a lab or biorepository, there are several productivity and profitability factors that you are constantly watching.  Like any operation, you are looking at capital costs, expenses and staffing, and you need to have good visibility on those costs to manage them.  For biobanking operations, there are several important cost factors that could be overlooked when managing a growing biological sample inventory.  Let’s look at some of the hidden costs that may not be fully evident on your balance sheet . . .

Hidden Capital Cost
Your sample inventory can be segmented and organized in a number of ways, including by project, sample age, client/user, staff responsibility, etc.  This commonly leads to the practice of... Read more

Roni
Or
Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - 09:22

With the dramatic growth of life science research promising more cures and treatments for disease, the volume of biological samples being stored in ultra-low temperature (ULT) biobanks around the world is growing dramatically.  As is often the case, "more" is not always better when quality control processes do not keep pace. Maintaining large collections of samples has many challenges that have only intensified with ever-growing sample inventories and increasing regulation.

If your biorepository is, like many, storing more biological specimens than ever, then sample management and preservation is also a growing taskwith potential threats to your important work. The value of a precious biological sample depends on its physical preservation at ultra-low temperatures, as well as... Read more

Roni
Or
Wednesday, January 27, 2016 - 08:56

Bio-banking has seen many changes over the past decade and is an important resource in medical research. Because the biological samples (usually in vials) are processed, labeled, stored and retrieved, it is crucial for the samples to be handled properly to avoid a potentially dangerous outbreak.

A keen example in the past recent months, separate Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratories that store high-risk, “select agents”, inadvertently sent dangerous materials to other laboratories possibly infecting scientists and killing other test specimens. This included possibly exposing CDC employees to live anthrax. In an unrelated incident CDC director, Thomas Frieden also announced that two of six vials of smallpox recently found stored in a National Institute of Health... Read more

Tina
Vitanza DeFalco
Sunday, September 20, 2015 - 21:30

In still a third mishap, vials containing live virus variola or smallpox were found in a storage room at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. It is said to be the first time smallpox that was unaccounted for was discovered since its eradication in the 1980s. The six vials, collected from the 1950s were found on July 1 were being stored with other vials containing influenza and Q fever. FDA officials will sweep all its cold-storage facilities around the country in fear of what else may be hiding in labs across the country. Only two labs are presently designated to handle smallpox and other labs around the world were required to destroy their smallpox strains since 1979. The last... Read more

Tina
Vitanza DeFalco
Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - 21:28