When the pandemic hit in March 2020, clinical labs faced a sudden halt in routine testing, and many were able to shift quickly to COVID-19 test offerings. Fast forward one year: with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, SARS-CoV-2 testing in clinical labs has rapidly declined. In the U.S., COVID-19 testing dropped from two million per day in January 2021 to only about one million in March.

Now labs are having to adapt again, leading forward-looking lab managers and directors to ask:

• What will be the new balance between testing for SARS-CoV-2 and routine diagnostics?
• Should my clinical laboratory even continue testing for coronavirus?
• Where is the best opportunity to generate revenue now?
• How do I transition my lab effectively—and efficiently—to best serve patients and the healthcare industry as a whole?

This eBook, Repurposing Your Lab’s Leftover COVID-19 Samples: Building New Revenue and Better Patient Outcomes Through Collaboration with Life Science, answers these questions and more. It explores how the rapid decline in SARS-CoV-2 testing affects molecular laboratories and the life sciences industry as a whole and offers opportunities for drug developers and labs to work together in new and beneficial ways.

Biospecimens present a win-win proposition for both the clinical lab and life sciences industries

As researchers on the life-science side study coronavirus and other diseases, the value of accumulated biosamples is being reevaluated. UCSF Professor Scott VandenBerg, MD, PhD, draws the connection: “Biospecimens are important because they allow researchers to better understand the causes of diseases and evaluate potential therapies.” Labs have always retained biospecimens, but COVID-19 has spotlighted their value.

Drugmakers are expected to prioritize the development of therapeutics for new patient cohorts, such as long-haul COVID-19 patients while verifying the fidelity of biomarkers used to identify and treat comorbidities. Data generated from analysis of leftover COVID-19 samples that labs can provide could dramatically accelerate this process.

This eBook examines how molecular laboratories can generate new revenue while also contributing to the greater good of society. One primary way to achieve both is to harvest more value from samples through new relationships with life science companies and biobanks. In these new business arrangements, labs would also benefit because instead of paying to dispose of their leftover COVID-19 specimens as regulated medical waste, they could biobank them at little to no cost.