Invest in teamwork to maximize your impact

You can go it alone, but with a reliable salivary analytics partner, investigators can offload the pressure of managing complex analytical methods that require technical precision and often involve significant administrative effort. Responsibility for sourcing materials, maintaining equipment, ensuring compliance, managing quality documentation, troubleshooting assays, and overseeing data protocols, can be daunting. Of course, those duties also involve training and supervising personnel, coordinating and maintaining compliance with campus environmental health and safety, and resolving issues tied to lab workflows. In short, managing laboratory operations pulls scientists away from where they provide the most value: innovation, creativity, and scholarship.

6 pre-planning steps towards better salivary bioscience

The best path for their study, and likely the best value for their budget, is to plan early and leverage the support and expertise readily available for analytical methods, following proven recommendations in the following areas:

#1 Logistics and workflow: Use existing infrastructure specifically designed to support your study’s workflow from research planning; to field collection; to storage and shipping; to laboratory analysis and data validation; to post-study statistical analysis and publication.

#2 Sample collection protocols: Follow standardized, published, and validated operating procedures whenever possible. Use established guidance for sample collection, handling, storage, and shipping to ensure consistency across participant groups and alignment with your study objectives.

#3 Standardizing sample collection and handling: Use highly published, validated, and FDA-registered collection devices and protocols to reduce variability within a study and across studies, building on the potential scientific impact.

#4 Pre-packaged, customized, and labeled collection kits: Outsource the organization and assembly of your collection kits when possible. This saves time, ensures consistency across participant groups, and reduces the risk of labeling errors, protocol deviations, and startup delays.

#5 High-quality assays:  Choose assays specifically designed for and widely validated in saliva research. Assays optimized to detect subtle biological responses tend to offer improved accuracy and precision, which can enhance the reliability of your data and the interpretability of your findings.

#6 Qualified, high-quality Core Lab testing: Use a high-quality core lab that follows the 7 Attributes of a High-Quality Bioscience Laboratory, such as:

1.    Performs routine calibration of lab equipment
2.    Follows rigorous quality acceptance criteria for assay results
3.    Follows a documented CV% acceptance/repeat criteria
4.    Allows only experienced laboratory personnel to run the assays
5.    Routinely processes saliva samples and performs saliva testing
6.    Participates in a proficiency testing program and sample exchanges
7.    Uses and recommends validated saliva collection methods

The Advantage of Leverage

Our commitment is to help researchers do their best research by prioritizing high-quality, validated methods that produce reliable, publishable data. We provide comprehensive, trustworthy guidance that allows teams to focus on participant recruitment and pursue high-impact scientific objectives that enhance the translational value of their research.

By partnering with a scientific team grounded in analytical precision, you can expand your capacity, sharpen your research focus, and ultimately amplify your contributions to the field by improving the likelihood of sustained funding, impactful findings, and future collaboration.

If you want to focus on your science, “Contact Salimetrics”.  We are a research methods company and helping researchers do great research matters to us.