Drop Date: November 2025

With increased interest in remote data collection and community-based sampling, investigators are continuously recalibrating and adapting.

Biospecimen strategies that enable self-collection while preserving scientific integrity without compromising sampling adherence and compliance are the new normal. The scientific challenge, of course, lies in capturing meaningful variability in the context of everyday life. Meeting this challenge requires efficient, effective, standard, and scalable best practices. This is where the combination of self-collected saliva and dried blood spot (DBS) specimens excels to enable a broader range of biological assessments than are possible in either specimen type alone.

Expanding Access with Cross-System Modeling 

In the past, requiring participants to travel to physical research sites could disproportionately exclude rural, pediatric, mobility-limited, or underserved populations. Today, in the era of remote work and Zoom/Teams video meetings, requiring participants to physically travel is even more problematic and likely to affect participant recruitment and retention rates. The methods associated with Saliva and DBS biospecimen collection have evolved such that at-home, self-administered collection is possible with minimal participant burden.  

Even more importantly, when used in combination, this multi-type biospecimen tactic provides a synergy in biological assessment possibilities that enables investigators to assess hormonal (e.g., cortisol, melatonin), inflammatory (e.g., CRP, IL-6), metabolic (e.g., insulin, HbA1c), and genomic and epigenetic information. That synergy is a “big add.”  It gives researchers choices and options they did not have before (or may not have taken advantage of before). 

Salimetrics has taken one small step to further facilitate this effort with “ready-to-use” Participant Sampling Packs that provide researchers with field-ready tools to conduct high-quality research quickly and reduce administrative burdens. These tools support both saliva and peripheral blood sampling to further enable: 

• Remote sampling without in-person or clinic visits  

• Access for hard-to-reach study participants 

• Minimized barriers to participant recruitment 

• Reduced participant dropout  

• Opportunity to sample biological measures across the day, week, months, or longer 

• Sampling biological variation in ecologically valid contexts 

Reducing Variability and Increasing Reproducibility 

Researchers have the power to reduce variability in the salivary bioscience testing phase of their study. The first step is selecting an established, high-quality assay that is routinely published with the lowest CVs, such as the Salimetrics’ salivary cortisol assay.  Next, the researcher should examine and choose an established, high-quality laboratory experienced for the assay being used before they send their samples. Salimetrics provides extensive laboratory quality control which commonly produces CVs of less than 3% for analytes such as salivary cortisol.

In any study, harmonization and alignment are key challenges. This could be fidelity of the implementation of sample collection across study sites or between research assistants, transfer of institutional knowledge of protocol from one generation of graduate assistants to the next, quality assurance between assay batches, or even how missing data is handled. Every day, Salimetrics collaborates with investigators in the weeds at the protocol level. We do so to increase the probability of reducing both unsystematic and systematic error and improve upon the value gained by the effort all of us invest in science. Salimetrics’ efforts are a tiny step towards this ultimate goal, which we continually reinforce with: 

• Comprehensive logistics support from proposal submission to study completion 

• Chemically compatible sampling materials for target analytes 

• ISO 13485 quality control and assurance of assay reagents 

• The highest standard in CoreLab+ analytical services  

• Integrated sampling adherence tracking 

The New Normal 

As research continues to evolve across disciplines and investigators are continually recalibrating and adapting, determining how best to leverage novel approaches can take time. Salimetrics is here to accelerate that learning curve, enabling investigators to apply these methods at the highest level quickly. The integration of saliva and dried blood spot (DBS) collection is more than a matter of convenience. Ultimately, it represents a deliberate design choice that strengthens study structure. This advancement is particularly impactful for investigators who have previously relied solely on saliva, as the addition of DBS markedly expands the range of biological assessments available, often to a greater extent than when DBS researchers incorporate saliva. Salimetrics provides not just materials, but a complete infrastructure to support: 

• Biomarker research in home, school, or community settings 

• Large-scale observational and translational science 

• National Studies and Surveys 

• Pediatric and vulnerable population studies 
• Multi-analyte panels that integrate across endocrine, immune, and metabolic systems 

The Future is Now

Combining saliva and DBS enables today’s researchers to design more inclusive, scalable, and impactful studies. This approach ensures sample integrity, supports compliance in real-world settings, and most importantly opens the door to novel scientific discovery. 

Contact Salimetrics so you can do your best research.