New partnership will allow HealthStar patients in Morristown, TN to make important contributions toward advancing medical research
Biological Specialty Company (BSC), a supplier of human blood products to more than 30,000 pharma, biotech, diagnostic and government researchers for scientific research, today announced a new partnership with HealthStar Physicians, a medical group practice in Morristown, TN. BSC has opened a new blood donor center in the HealthStar Physicians building at 420 W. Morris Blvd., Morristown so that patients who would like to help advance medical research into new drugs and diagnostics can do so quickly and easily.
“Blood donors are the unsung heroes of medical research, especially during a pandemic. We are opening this new blood donor center in partnership with HealthStar Physicians to say thank you and make the collection process as convenient as possible for their thoughtful patients. HealthStar patients will need to be 18 years of age or older with a physician-confirmed disease diagnosis, such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, hepatitis B or a thyroid condition, to participate,” said Kevin King, Senior Director of Immune Cell Operations at BSC.
“Our patients are smart, caring and proactive about their health, so we thought that this new partnership with BSC would appeal to them as a way to help progress scientific research into diseases that they know personally and those, such as COVID-19, that can also impact their family and friends,” said Wayne Ketron, Clinical Research Trials Manager at HealthStar Physicians.
Blood and plasma samples collected by BSC are used by medical researchers in many ways. For example, they are used to develop diagnostic tools, such as COVID-19 rapid tests; determine whether new drugs and vaccines are safe and effective; increase knowledge of how a disease develops; and determine which biomarkers serve as warning signs for a disease. BSC has 41 years’ experience collecting blood samples and it operates donor centers in California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. The company collected approximately 10,000 blood donations in 2020.
Patients who are interested in donating can contact BSC via its website at www.biospecialty.com or by email at donors@biospecialty.com. To obtain more information or schedule an appointment, patients can call 1-833-GO-4-CURE to speak with the donor coordinator.
All potential donors will be pre-screened to confirm their eligibility. Patients will be asked to provide some demographic information, including their age, ethnicity, and gender, their medications, co-morbidities, and smoking status as well as details about their illness (physician diagnosis, date of onset, etc.). Personal information will be kept confidential and will not accompany their specimen.
Upon completing their donation, patients will be compensated for their time and effort.
About Biological Specialty Company (BSC)
BSC, a BioIVT company, is a leading provider of human blood products and biological specimens to the research community. BSC specializes in the collection of whole blood, plasma, serum, white cells, red cells, and other biofluids from consented donors. Donors are screened according to AABB guidelines and undergo a complete battery of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) required infectious disease state tests. For 41 years, specimens collected at BSC donor centers, in Colmar, Allentown and Reading, PA, have supported the development of therapeutics and in vitro diagnostic assays. Other BSC donor centers are located in Gray, TN, Berkeley, CA and Medford, MA, serving the Boston area.