Archive for May, 2009

Human Primary Diseased Cells | Conversant

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

In the past, researchers have used immortalized cell lines due to their widespread availability, ease of generation, and homogeneity. However, there is a growing belief in the scientific community that transformed cell lines don’t always reflect the natural biological responses of normal and diseased primary human cells.

We couldn’t agree more.

Conversant is on the forefront of a movement towards the use of primary human cells from cancer and hematologic patients for a variety of biological studies. Whether it be hematologic issues such as Polycythemia Vera (“PV”) or leukemia’s such as Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (“CML”), Conversant has primary cells from these patients available immediately for your assays.

Contact us any time to discuss.

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H1N1 Virus? You don’t stand a chance! CLL | Conversant

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

This week has been pretty big in terms of coming to grips with the H1N1 Swine Flu virus… there have been 4 confirmed cases here in Huntsville, Alabama.

Despite this fact, we were very excited to hear that one of our major collaborators – Dr. Jian Han – has already developed a test for the H1N1 Swine Flu virus. In much the same way Dr. Han is analyzing our Primary Cells in the area of Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia (“CLL”), he is also able to analyze samples for Swine Flu.

In fact, I just saw him walk out the door of HudsonAlpha on the way to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) in Atlanta.

The world is moving fast, and advances like those being made by Dr. Han are making a big difference in how we respond to epidemics today and in the future.

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San Francisco, a biotechnology HUB!| Conversant

Friday, May 1st, 2009

Conversant has been busy… over the past 3 weeks I have been traveling all over the United States talking with companies and researchers about our Human Primary Cells, our Circulating Tumor Cells, and our other products and services. As you might imagine, our clients lead us in some very interesting directions with our products… and they also lead us all over the country and even the world. But there is just something really unique about the San Francisco biotech community.

From downtown San Francisco to South San Francisco, to Redwood City, to Palo Alto, to Sunnyvale, our cancer, hematology, and immunology research Clients are up to some pretty amazing research.

They study B-Cells, they study CD34+ cells, they study Circulating Tumor cells, they extract cancer DNA and cancer RNA, and they generally wow me everytime I have a chance to visit. All this traveling has been great to see and gives me a ton of confidence in our economy. Thank all of you for including Conversant in your research studies; we appreciate your business.

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