Great ideas and new technologies tend to arise at small and innovative companies that are able to quickly adapt, grow and adopt the newest and best technologies. The same holds true for the contract research services business where small companies are bringing to market cutting-edge technologies and services that allow pharmaceutical companies to accelerate therapeutic discovery and development while reducing costs.
However, one of the major problems in leveraging these cutting-edge technologies and novel services has been that traditionally it has been incredibly challenging for small companies to transact with large pharmaceutical companies. The contracting and procurement process to begin working with pharmaceutical companies has been traditionally arduous and has prevented pharmaceutical companies from adopting the newest technologies. Typically, a researcher at a pharmaceutical company wants to use a small companies services but is delayed due to procurement for weeks or months. By the time the researcher gets approval, they have typically moved on to address their question with a more expensive or less useful approach. Many pharmaceutical companies have traditionally relied upon a few large selected service providers to accelerate procurement and contracting, but at the loss of new and innovative solutions.
Recently, Science Exchange and Scientist.com have set out to reduce this barrier to entry such that scientists at pharmaceutical companies can begin working directly with almost any vendor within hours. Both of these platforms allow for vendor verification and billing so that the process of starting a new service project or adopting a new technology is seamless regardless of vendor or purchasers company size.
Therefore, we are excited to announce that our 3Screen™ drug discovery services are available directly through both science exchange and scientist.com. Researchers at pharmaceutical companies can now easily leverage our digital pathology, 3D cell culture and whole mount imaging services for their drug discovery research questions.