News & Events

Your Beginners Guide to Outsourcing Pathology Services should feature chapters on these three qualities: Efficiency, accuracy and affordability.

Making the decision to outsource your preclinical histopathology to a contract laboratory can deliver a myriad of benefits including: the assurance of regulatory compliance; timely and reliable results; and, perhaps most importantly, access to the most highly trained and experienced staff without the cost of hiring and training those individuals in-house. Veterinary pathologists play a key role as team members contributing to drug discovery and safety. To ensure that the veterinary pathologist evaluating your study has the proper qualifications, be sure to ask the following questions:

Successful preclinical research programs rely on board-certified veterinary pathologists to provide critical and accurate analyses pertaining to safety and clinical relevance of the experimental product. To obtain the most comprehensive and high-quality final reports, it is vital to ensure that the study pathologist has access to the most effective support team and most pertinent tools available. Below is a list of items that will provide crucial support to the study pathologist and will ensure the highest quality pathology report:

Market demand for outsourced preclinical research services is growing. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies need contract research organization (CRO) partners who can help them maximize productivity and efficiency in research and development. Faced with a variety of cost pressures, such as patent expiries and more competition from generics, pharmaceutical companies are building strategic relationships with CROs at an increasing rate.

A quality preclinical pathology report will include critical analysis and interpretation of histopathological and toxicological data, providing the foundation for making a decision on how best to proceed with your preclinical research. Prior to study initiation, it is crucial to ensure that the study pathologist is up to the task of delivering an accurate and comprehensive pathology report. Although, often incorporated as an appendix to the final study report, the pathology report should constitute a stand-alone document that is ultimately responsible for characterizing the preclinical safety of your compound or biologic.

Biotech companies are under extreme pressure to improve their research and development productivity. The internal management of veterinary pathology services, in particular, can require a great deal of time and resources that can otherwise be used to focus on your core competencies. Many choose to respond to this challenge by working with research associates (RA) who can provide technical and administrative support to pathologists overseeing drug discovery and preclinical studies. Many pathologists do not have research associates supporting their efforts. RAs are valuable extensions of pathologists and have the ability to assist with various aspects of study management in a cost-effective manner. Thus, adding an RA to your team can exponentially increase your productivity and expand your study load capacity.