Provia Labs wins SAIC-Frederick, Inc. Subcontract

Lexington, MA – Provia Laboratories, LLC, has been awarded a subcontract with SAIC-Frederick, Inc. to assist the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, on an initiative to study the impact of different tissue-collection procedures on the quality of biospecimens used in medical research.

Provia Labs will participate in the NCI’s Biospecimen Research Network (BRN) to help manage the deployment of tools, technologies, and quality-control programs to multiple collection sites at academic medical centers. These sites will seek informed consent from hundreds of donors and then collect, process, and annotate thousands of specimens from these donors. Provia will help define the critical collection, handling, and processing variables that will be annotated by the collection sites and studied for their impact on biospecimen quality. The overall objective of this five-year program is to determine what steps in tissue handling are critical for optimal biospecimen preservation.

The BRN is a group assembled from inside and outside the NCI to conduct biospecimen acquisition and banking research under the direction of the NCI’s Office of Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research (OBBR). The BRN seeks to become the national leader in the emerging field of biospecimen science and engage the scientific community in biospecimen-focused research and publication.

“We at Provia Labs feel privileged to be part of this important initiative,” said Howard Greenman, CEO of Provia Labs. “The use of quality biospecimens is critical to the discovery and delivery of medical therapies. The BRN’s leadership will lead to better research, clearer standards, and greater knowledge of best practices when it comes to the collection, processing, and storage of biospecimens.”

Greenman added, “While Provia’s primary business is the collection, processing, and storage of individuals’ specimens for their own future clinical use – for example, a family’s dental stem cells – we welcome opportunities to use our biobanking expertise to advance life-sciences research.”

Greenman was an invited speaker last year at the OBBR’s Biospecimen Research Symposium, an annual gathering of hundreds of opinion leaders in the biobanking field. Provia Labs has already served as a consultant to the OBBR during initial site evaluations at major medical centers.

In 2011, Provia Labs introduced its next-generation biospecimen storage container, the Proviasette™. The Proviasette offers an optimal way to maintain the integrity and tracking of stored biospecimens. It can be used for storage in liquid nitrogen (vapor phase) and -80°C mechanical freezers, and includes optional data-tracking components, such as RFID tags.

Provia Labs also provides Store-A-Tooth™, a service that enables families to preserve dental stem cells for potential use in future stem-cell therapies. Already established in the United States, Store-A-Tooth is also commercially available in several Latin American countries, as well as India.

To read more news about Provia Labs, go to Provia Labs to make Chicago Midwinter Meeting debut.

To read more about Provia Labs, visit www.provialabs.com/.

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