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- Market Research + Assessment
- Competitive Analysis
- Financial Analysis
- Capital Requirements + Investment Funding Strategy
- Organization Design + Governance
- Strategic Planning + Operational Scaleup
- Structuring Strategic Alliances
- Communications Strategy
- Community Engagement
“The innovations demonstrated and discussed at today’s BioPolicy Summit have the potential to make a profound impact on the quality of research. Laboratories are changing. New inventions and developments are redefining the lab environment and workflow characteristics at every step of the scientific process. Affordable, accessible biotech solutions are democratizing scientific discovery, putting sophisticated tools and data in the hands of more scientists than ever before, and making protocols and results easier to share.”Leonard P. Freedman, PhD, Chief Science Officer at Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research;
Former President, Global Biological Standards Institute
Situation:
The Global Biological Standards Institute (GBSI), was a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing the quality of biomedical research by advocating best practices and standards to improve the quality of life science research and accelerate the translation of research breakthroughs into life-saving therapies. It advanced its mission by influencing policy, advancing science education and training, sponsoring and publishing applied research, and engaging stakeholders across government, industry, academia and life science organizations. Its Scientific Advisory Board provided expert guidance and critical national and international perspectives on GBSI initiatives to advance life science standards in life science research.
GBSI worked to enhance the credibility, reproducibility and translatability of biomedical research through the development of best practices, standards and Reproducibility 2020, a challenge and action plan for the bio-medical research community to significantly improve the quality of pre-clinical biological research by year 2020.
GBSI needed to attract additional sources of funding and initiate new programs and partnerships to ensure its long-range viability.
Actions:
Phase I: Feasibility Assessment
NJK+A undertook a Feasibility Study designed to evaluate the performance of GBSI and a pathway for growth. The Feasibility Assessment included:
- Stakeholder interviews
- Market assessment
- Alternative business models to achieve sustainability
- Identification of potential collaborators
- Framework for strategic, organizataional, financial and implementation planning
- Recommendations and next steps
Phase II: Strategic Planning
NJK+A conducted a thorough business and financial planning process, operational assessment, personnel review and strategic outreach in order to position GBSI for future growth and development. NJK+A developed an integrated strategic plan for GBSI, encompassing mission/vision and organizational, financial, operational options and strategies with implementation timeline and budget.
Phase III: Implementation
NJK+A worked to implement the Strategic Plan and assist with programming and fundraising.
As part of these efforts, NJK+A helped to organize GBSI’s Third BioPolicy Summit, “Improving Reproducibility of Research Through Digital Tools, Technologies and Laboratory Automation,” at San Francisco’s Mission Bay Conference Center. The Summit built upon industry gatherings held by GBSI since 2013, convening stakeholders in cell authentication, antibody validation and other priorities undertaken by the life sciences research community to address the reproducibility crisis.
At the meeting, inventors and technology experts demonstrated their latest creations that promised to support scientists and revolutionize the way science is done. Scientists, researchers and academicians offered insight into organizational strategies and tools needed to capture the benefits of automation, and steered discussion about how these innovations, along with traditional scientific methods and expertise, will lead to more reproducible research.
Results:
The Feasibility Study concluded that GBSI’s work to date has laid a solid, credible foundation for the future. It had identified and highlighted the need for standards across life sciences and worked with a broad spectrum of stakeholders to effect change. GBSI had created a trusted independent forum through which other stakeholders could address biological standards issues and move toward actionable solutions. The Strategic Plan provided a road map for the future.
Ultimately, GBSI was funded by its Board for two additional years, during which time it made important contributions to the national debate around reproducibility of research and advanced initiatives in cell line authentication, good research practices, antibody validation, establishing a bioscpecimen commons and an education and training program.
At GBSI’s Third BioPolicy Summit, top scientists, biomedical researchers, investors and funders came together with science inventors and programmers to consider the laboratory of the future and explore how newly affordable and accessible digital tool, technologies and lab automation advances would increase reproducibility in preclinical research… and ultimately accelerate the discovery of treatments and cures.
Among the 30 experts who presented inventions and ideas were representatives from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Boston University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Chan Zuyckerberg Initiative, HackScience, Khosla Ventures, MIT Media Lab, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NIH), Nature, SciNote, Stanford University, Transcriptic, Tetrascience, Zymergen, and others.
