Biospecimens are the foundation of every discovery in diagnostics, research, and drug development. They fuel the search for new therapies and assays, power clinical trials, and are at the core of the data that drives innovation in healthcare. Yet, behind the curtain of biospecimen procurement lies a malignancy — one that most researchers feel every day but never really question or may not think they can do anything about.
We all know what a (costly, time-consuming) challenge getting the high-quality specimens we need, when we need them, can be. But have you ever stopped to wonder why?
From what I have seen, researchers don’t know they can question, even challenge, the status quo, and don’t think to ask why…
- Biospecimen providers don’t list their inventories online—or why it takes weeks just to get a list
- Requested samples take so long to arrive
- Different biospecimen sellers list samples with identical genomic and demographic data
- Sample quality is so unpredictable
- The accompanying data can range from robust to almost nonexistent
- Prices seem disconnected from what’s actually provided.
Most of us in the industry have written these challenges off as just part of the process — assuming the delays and inconsistencies are there for good, ethical reasons. We convince ourselves this is just what responsible science looks like.
But it shouldn’t be this way. It doesn’t have to, either.
A Look Behind the Curtain
What most lab managers and research scientists don’t realize is that it’s possible today to act as a “biospecimen supplier” without ever even touching a biospecimen, or employing a single scientist.
The truth is, many biospecimen providers don’t collect or bank samples themselves. Rather, they resell access to material biobanked by hospitals, labs, or other suppliers.
One individual sample often becomes many listings. One patient’s tissue becomes five vendors’ “inventory”. And, researchers are left paying multiple times for the same resource without knowing who truly collected, processed, or verified it.
This “shadow network” drives up costs while driving down accountability. Every additional sample handoff introduces delay, dilutes data, and distances the researcher from the original source. Provenance becomes opaque, quality becomes unpredictable, and the integrity of the data attached to each sample—its medical history, pathology notes, genomic sequence—becomes harder to trust.
That’s how an ecosystem built to fuel innovation becomes one that often complicates and even undermines it.
Good People in a Flawed System
This isn’t necessarily a story of bad actors. But it is a story of misplaced incentives.
Most people working in biospecimen procurement genuinely want to support research and improve patient care. But the system they operate in rewards the wrong things. Success is measured in throughput, not traceability; in margin, not metadata.
It’s business-school logic applied to biology: diversify your supply, protect your moat, minimize costs. Over time, that mindset has created a fragmented marketplace where transparency is sacrificed for volume.
When the goal is to keep inventory flowing, the temptation is to source from whoever has material available, often without direct visibility into how that specimen was collected, stored, or characterized. Providers become brokers of access rather than stewards of science, relisting samples obtained from other suppliers to meet demand and maintain revenue.
The barrier to entry is low: anyone with a spreadsheet, a few supplier contacts, and a convincing website can present themselves as a biospecimen provider. The margins are high because researchers are under pressure to move fast and can’t always vet the chain of custody. And the cost of oversight, documentation, and ethical surety is rarely built into the business model.
The result is an ecosystem optimized for transactions, not trust. One that looks robust on paper but functions more like a hall of mirrors.
You Can’t Build Good Science on a Bad Foundation
The consequences of this broken brokerage system are both scientific and ethical.
Inconsistent documentation and unclear provenance can corrupt data sets that feed downstream research. When you don’t know how a specimen was collected or stored, you can’t trust the results derived from it.
Reproducibility, regulatory readiness, and patient safety all depend on one thing: traceability. Without it, even the most promising study risks becoming another irreproducible experiment lost to the “file drawer” of failed validation.
It’s not just about data. When specimens are treated as commodities to be flipped rather than scientific materials to be stewarded, we risk eroding the trust of donors, patients, and partners who make research possible.
Behind every biospecimen is a patient — someone who either consented, or unknowingly allowed, a part of themselves to be used in the name of science. In many cases, patients haven’t explicitly agreed to this; their tissues are considered “remnants” eligible for research use after a certain period of time, or their consent is buried in the fine print of pre-surgical paperwork.
When that tissue becomes a tradeable asset passed through multiple intermediaries, that trust — whether freely given or silently assumed — is quietly betrayed. Patients are rarely informed that their samples may be resold, relabeled, or marked up many times over. In some cases, the same specimen is profited from repeatedly by organizations that had no role in its collection or care.
This kind of exploitation doesn’t just distort the economics of science, it undermines the moral contract with our patients who make research possible.
The Path Forward: Transparency, Traceability, and Collaboration
Researchers have accepted a broken system because they haven’t been shown a better one. Finding a solution starts with honesty about how specimens move through the system and who is actually accountable for them.
True transparency means more than a compliance checklist. It means verifiable origins, consistent metadata, and a documented chain of custody from patient to lab bench. It means fewer intermediaries and greater visibility into where each sample came from and how it was handled. It means a commitment to keeping costs reasonable, with a goal of unblocking innovation rather than maximizing margins.
Transparency alone isn’t enough. The industry also needs collaboration, not competition, among trusted partners who share the same high scientific standards and unshakable ethical values.
Specimen providers need to investigate new models that do exactly that. We need to collaborate to ensure that biospecimens aren’t just exchanged, they’re enhanced. Pathology expertise, sequencing capabilities, and data annotation could be shared across members of a collective, elevating quality while ensuring ethical standards.
This type of collective, with a shared commitment to raising the bar in biospecimen sourcing and a shared goal, could be a significant advancement to help medical innovations reach the patients who need them.
From Fragmentation to Integrity
If the past decade in biospecimen procurement has been about scaling access, then the next must be about restoring integrity.
Researchers should know what they’re getting, where they’re getting it from, and why that matters. Our industry must replace the patchwork system of brokers and blind trust with one built on clarity and accountability. That shift won’t just streamline procurement, it will strengthen the scientific foundation upon which diagnostics, therapeutics, and patient care depend.
The truth is simple: the quality of our discoveries can never exceed the quality of the specimens behind them. By facing this issue head-on and collaborating to remedy how we source our specimens, every downstream breakthrough will benefit.
About the Author
Inga Rose
Inga Rose is a former research scientist and the founder and CEO of Reference Medicine, an oncology specimen procurement partner that provides laboratories, startups, academic researchers, and others with the specimens needed to fuel oncology diagnostic innovation. Built by scientists, for scientists, Reference Medicine focuses on delivering a “hassle-free” experience by offering price transparency, online inventory browsing, speedy delivery times, and rapid customer service response rates.
