Discovery Life Sciences, Los Osos, Calif, has significantly expanded its Discovery Partners Clinical Research network, which identifies patients for high value, next-generation medical device clinical trials and that can contribute proprietary products directly to its Magellan platform—an online, open-access biorepository.

“We had two clear business goals for the first and second quarters of 2017,” says Steven Raia, a founder of Discovery Life Sciences and its chief business officer. “The first, contributing operational resources and directing our investments toward expanding our Discovery Partners clinical site capabilities in areas critical to our future growth—cancer, hepatitis, human immunodeficiency virus, and women’s health; and the second, incorporating functional improvements into our Magellan platform that make it significantly easier for our in vitro diagnostic and life sciences industry clients to go online, purchase the research samples they want, and have them delivered overnight.”

Raia adds, “For our clients, the Magellan platform is unique in that it allows their research and development programs to see a very large number of available diagnostic specimens and human biofluids online together with their associated data and have them delivered the next day; our clients don’t have to wait for other providers’ fulfillment schedules.”

“I think we’ve done an excellent job so far this year of accomplishing both objectives by adding over a dozen clinical sites with principal investigators and thousands of unique patients with specific disease profiles that can contribute the larger volume sample sets often required by our clients pursuing next-generation tests in the in vitro diagnostic industry,” says Steve Dover, chief operating officer for Discovery Life Sciences. “These new clinical sites also allow us to continue to improve and contribute to our biorepository in a way that allows research scientists to shop for the more complex sample sets they want online.”

Dover adds, “In addition, these new and expanded research partnerships, together with improvements to our shipping logistics, have allowed Discovery Life Sciences to move time-sensitive human biospecimens globally, particularly in and out of complex geographies. As always, obtaining the proper informed consent, protecting patient confidentiality, and ensuring cold chain sample integrity of these materials, regardless of their origin, is critical for all our clients research programs.”

For more information, visit Discovery Life Sciences.