Over time, pharmaceutical and biotech companies are increasingly outsourcing studies that are not core to their strategy. Today companies focus on being efficient by working on more complex internal projects to bring safe and effective drug products in a cost and time-effective manner. Such an approach ensures that sponsors are always on track in the drug discovery pathway. An increased efficiency, reduced costs, and optimal expertise are crucial features of a bioanalytical laboratory.
Bioanalytical laboratories have introduced new players to the drug discovery and development process. They help companies avoid the risks of acquiring expensive analytical equipment, especially when sponsors are in the initial developmental stage of a drug product. Moreover, expert partners such as NorthEast bioanalytical laboratories provide sponsors with specialized analytical testing services to deliver robust and rapid results. Let us understand how cost and speed are vital attributes of a reliable bioanalytical laboratory service provider.
Why cost and speed are two vital features of bioanalytical laboratories?
Managing costs is a challenging task for any drug development project. Due to the business model of bioanalytical laboratory services, they are efficient at managing costs while maintaining quality and productivity. Bioanalytical labs have the flexibility to adjust systems and processes to meet all client expectations. They typically achieve this flexibility by maintaining a healthy proportion of method development and validation studies and smaller and larger preclinical and clinical studies. Most bioanalytical laboratory services will segment their workforce in such a way that they support each aspect of a drug development project. For example, a dedicated team of scientists experienced in method development and validation working on bioanalytical assay development.
Besides, most laboratories today employ automation. Automation not only lowers the costs associated with scientific expenses but also reduces the potential for human errors. CROs have automation and systems to decrease manual input, which eventually increases data quality and productivity. Moreover, due to their line of work, they continuously test and optimize their systems to work on numerous projects, clients, and auditors. Each time a particular bioanalytical system is optimized, it becomes efficient for the client as well as for sponsors of subsequent projects.
For small and mid-sized pharmaceutical companies, outsourcing regulated studies reduce considerable costs and speed up data analysis. Outsourcing studies helps them accelerate their compound of interest through preclinical and clinical studies without requiring quality systems and SOPs necessary for regulated bioanalysis. Not to mention, outsourcing studies negate the costs for maintenance and purchasing instruments, and salaries for dedicated staff personnel.
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Larger companies typically outsource extensive bioanalytical studies. Hence, their in-house bioanalytical team can focus more on research and internal studies instead of performing routine bioanalytical procedures. However, they won’t have the extent of control and oversight they may have while conducting these studies in-house.
Bioanalytical laboratory services must carefully manage project workloads to deliver consistent and reliable results. Besides, they must continually train their employees on newer approaches in bioanalytical sciences. Bioanalytical laboratories that focus on managing capacities, training staff, and growing at a stable rate are the ones that can efficiently save costs and rapidly accelerate studies while maintaining quality and productivity.