Its founders have announced that a sum of $1.8m (€1.3m) has been raised from private investors in a Series A financing that will allow it to push the website's development through the final stages and make it a reality next year after over two years in the making. The intended website, called Assay Depot, aims to be a "single point of contact between drug researchers and research service providers," which it claims can "dramatically improve the efficiency of the drug discovery process." "An efficient online pharmaceutical marketplace will transform how drug discovery is done", said Kevin Lustig, president and CEO of Assay Depot. The way it works is that researchers can search the database to identify a participating service provider that can fill their requirement and then place an online order for a specific service. They would then mail their sample to assay depot, who in turn passes it on to the pre-chosen service provider for analysis. They then analyse the sample and send the data back to Assay depot, who will then generate a data report and pass this back to the customer . The whole process is supposedly carried out within a few weeks. "By acting as the single point of contact between research scientists and research service providers, the marketplace can maintain high quality standards for researchers and reduce infrastructure requirements for providers," said Assay depot. "For customers, we're a one-stop shop for high quality research services. For service providers, we're a unique way to increase revenue and gain market share without having to build additional business infrastructure." Liquid chromatography service provider Nanostream has recently announced that it signed up to join the new website's service provider network upon its launch.
