Is your future in your blood?

It’s a head-turning headline: “One little drop of your blood may someday predict how long you’ll live.” Until it comes true, know that science is making surprising progress toward gauging our risk of disease and early death. Dr. David Brown lays out the facts quite lucidly in the Washington Post. A host of biomarkers in…

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January Specimen Spotlight: Exploring the ‘Gut-Brain Axis’

Got a gut feeling? It could be your biology. This month, we highlight an order of healthy, fresh intestinal tissue for a team of researchers studying what is known as the gut-brain axis. We are providing them with samples from the stomach, duodenum, colon, and other intestinal regions to study the intestinal microbiome, or the…

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Infographic: The Increasing Need for Medical Laboratory Professionals

Coming off of Thanksgiving break, with thoughts of gratitude and appreciation, we recalled the often unrecognized but critical role of medical laboratory professionals. Functioning mostly behind the scenes, these technicians and scientists work diligently to execute on diagnostic testing and patient care – and we will need even more of them as the population ages…

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October Specimen Spotlight: Trick or Treatment

For our October Specimen Spotlight, rather than highlighting one particular order, we present to you some seemingly spooooky requests we’ve actually received from researchers and organizations. While you might think such requests are rare, scientists across the globe are conducting a variety of studies requiring specimens that seem more frightful than insightful. But new diagnostics…

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September is Blood Cancer Awareness Month

Every three minutes, someone in the United States is diagnosed with a form of blood cancer, such as leukemia, lymphoma, or myeloma, and every nine minutes someone in our country dies from the disease, according to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS). Additionally, more than a third of blood cancer patients still do not survive…

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Sourcing Heart Tissue to Study Cardiac Fibrosis

Congestive heart failure (CHF), a progressive condition that affects the pumping power of the heart, currently impacts about 5.7 million adults in the United States. CHF is often life-threatening, with 50% of patients passing away within five years of diagnosis. The most common type of CHF is left-sided CHF, and when fibrosis, a related scarring…

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Men’s Health Month & Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month Collide

Each June, millions of Americans gather in support of both Men’s Health Month and Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month, two crucial initiatives meant to increase public awareness and the advancement of research. Interestingly, new research recently broke that pertains to both sets of health issues – more specifically, men and their likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s…

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Infographic: The Evolution of Cancer Biospecimens

With the widespread adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) and overall digitization of healthcare upon us, it is no longer just primary care physicians who benefit from the increased data wellspring in medicine. An influx of patient information, along with other advances in technology and the expansion of precision medicine, is allowing for a new…

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