Three Million DBS Samples: Scaling Decentralized Sampling and Quantitative Biomarker Analysis
Vitas has reached a major milestone with the receipt, analysis and reporting of its three millionth dried blood spot (DBS) sample. The achievement reflects the growing use of DBS in pharmaceutical development, clinical and population research, nutritional studies and other professionally sponsored biomarker projects. With samples now arriving from more than 50 countries, the milestone also demonstrates Vitas’ capacity to combine decentralised sample collection with high-throughput, quantitative laboratory analysis.
The Pivotal Role of Local GMP Labs in Pharmaceutical Quality Control
Local GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) labs play a crucial role in pharmaceutical quality control by ensuring product safety, efficacy, and regulatory compliance through rigorous testing and validation. Vitas, leveraging its GMP-certified facilities, offers a wide array of services such as method development, validation, stability testing, impurity characterization, and regulatory support, all crucial for ensuring pharmaceutical product quality and compliance with international standards. Choosing a local partner simplifies communication and ensures proper alignment on project aims throughout the development phases.
The Gut Microbiome: From Microbial Metabolism to Human Biology
The human gastrointestinal tract is home to one of the most diverse biological ecosystems on Earth. Collectively known as the gut microbiome, this vast community of bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses contains trillions of microorganisms that coexist with their human host. Although these microorganisms represent only a small fraction of our body mass, they possess an enormous collective metabolic capacity, producing thousands of chemical compounds that influence the biochemical environment of the intestine and beyond.
What some customers say.
Our collaboration with Vitas is a key factor in our business model and we couldn’t be happier with the near flawless services they provide us on a daily basis.
– Dag Bergheim Pettersen, CEO
Zinzino AB
Sweden
Vitas was an analytical partner in multiple large-scale EU-funded studies, where they performed the huge task of analysing several nutritional biomarkers in tens of thousands of blood samples.
Results were always delivered on time with excellent consistency across the batches.
The resulting data have been key in a number of important publications in BMJ, Nature Communications, and the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology.
It was a pleasure working with Vitas - I highly recommend them!
– John Danesh
Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine
University of Cambridge, UK
We used the analytical services of Vitas in our Large Zoe Predict nutritional studies. The quality was impressive and the data was included in our pivotal 2020 Nature Medicine paper and several other high impact journals.
– Tim Spector, Professor
King's College London
UK
We used the analytical services of Vitas in our ZOE Predict 1 study of over 1,000 people which we used to build the original data science models for our company ZOE, and led to two Nature Medicine papers. We were really delighted with the quality of the results, and the proactive engagement of the team.
– Jonathan Wolf, Cofounder & CEO
ZOE
UK
I know Vitas for their versatility and deep knowledge of analytical chemistry, making them highly attractive partners in a wide range of studies. We are greatly appreciative for their professionalism and proactive involvement in the analytical community and opportunities they provide for young researchers.
– Steven Ray Wilson, Professor
Department of Chemistriy, Section of Chemical Life Sciences
University of Oslo, Norway
We are using Vitas analytical services in the clinical development of our FMPV-1 cancer vaccine.
Key characteristics about Vitas:
- Quality and competence provider
- Reliable
- Customer focused
- Flexible and team oriented
We are very satisfied with the service and our collaboration and are looking forward to initiating new projects together
– Berit Iversen, CTO
Hubro Therapeutics AS
Norway
Good Technology, good people, good service: trustworthy and reliable.
–Hannelore Daniel, Professor Emeritus
Technical University of Munich
Germany
I still remember: In 2010 we met as a group of molecular nutrition scientists to shape the “Nutrition Researcher Cohort”, experimenting on ourselves, and Thomas was willing to provide Vitas analytical and diagnostic expertise.
Vitas has come a long way since then, surpassing one million specialized and miniaturized analyses, and well on its way to two million. Still vigorously critical on science and analytics, there is a bright future ahead.
- Ben van Ommen
TNO, The Netherlands
For several years we have used Vitas to analyze blood samples in our drug development program. They have always made a great effort to develop methods to meet our analytical requirements and we have also received valuable advice and feedback to improve our sampling process. We are very satisfied with the analytical services provided together with the accurate and consistent data reported by Vitas.
- Ann Kari Grindheim, Senior Scientist
Pluvia AS, Norway
You're in good company.
