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iSpecimen shares surged more than 140% in early trading.iSpecimen Inc.(Nasdaq: ISPC), an online marketplace forhuman biospecimens, today announced that it has been contracted to support new advanced research on COVID-19 seeking insights on its transmissibility, variants, outcomes, and testing validity among multiple population segments. In the last ten months, the company has partnered with multiple research and health care organizations on a range of diverse projects requiring a variety of COVID-19 samples, including nasal swabs, saliva, and blood products.

The Company's work on COVID-19 began immediately after the outbreak last year when it began sending serum samples to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help researchers monitor antibody development for possible guidance on immunity. iSpecimen provided the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ("CDC") with 600 SARS-CoV-2-positive serum samples and 100 negative serum samples, mostly remnants from lab tests.

In addition, iSpecimen has been contracted by other federal agencies and private companies for custom COVID-19 collections, which are often complex and complement the more immediate availability of remnant or banked samples.

"COVID-19 has claimed more than 5 million lives, and it will require a lot of additional research to control the pandemic and improve society's ability to contend with future outbreaks of infectious diseases," said iSpecimen Founder and CEO,Christopher Ianelli, MD, Ph.D. "We embrace the challenge and are gratified that researchers are coming to us for the specific biospecimens they need from the types of patients they're focusing on."

COVID-Related Research

In addition to the work iSpecimen has done with the CDC, iSpecimen has recently supplied hundreds of human biospecimens to ongoing COVID-19 research being conducted by the United Statesmilitary. The specimens, including positive SARS-CoV-2 samples and negative controls, help researchers validate COVID-19 testing platforms, understand fluctuations in patients' antibody levels, monitor contagion among close contacts, and more.