23-year-old biospecimen CRO marks milestone with expanded capabilities for translational research, biomarker discovery, companion diagnostic development, and liquid biopsy validation across oncology and autoimmune programs

LOS ANGELES, June 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- MT Group, a specialty biospecimen contract research organization (CRO) supplying clinically annotated human biospecimens to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and in vitro diagnostics (IVD) companies worldwide, today announced that it has surpassed 5,000 customized biospecimen collections completed for translational research and assay development sponsors. The milestone reflects more than two decades of consultative collection design and reinforces MT Group's position as one of the few biospecimen suppliers in the industry whose primary business model is purpose-built prospective collection.

The announcement marks the first time MT Group has publicly quantified the scale of its customized collection program, which complements the company's standing biobank inventory of human FFPE tissue, plasma, and buffy coats. While many biospecimen suppliers operate primarily as distributors of pre-collected, off-the-shelf samples, MT Group's customized collection service is designed for sponsors whose research questions cannot be answered with archived material — including studies that require narrow inclusion and exclusion criteria, treatment-naive baselines, longitudinal multi-timepoint sampling, matched tissue and blood from the same subject, or deep custom clinical annotation that exceeds what a typical biobank record contains.

"Most of the work that defines our business is invisible from the outside," said Marc Siegel, President of MT Group. "It happens in the design phase — before a single tube is drawn or a single block is cut — when we sit down with a sponsor's translational team and figure out exactly which patients, which timepoints, which clinical fields, and which preanalytical conditions will answer the scientific question they are trying to answer. That's what a customized collection is. Reaching 5,000 is a milestone worth marking, and a reminder that prospective biospecimen collection is a craft, not a commodity."

What "Customized Collection" Means at MT Group

A customized biospecimen collection at MT Group begins with a study design consultation rather than a catalog search. The company's scientific team — which includes board-certified pathologists, clinical operations specialists, and disease-area experts — works directly with the sponsor's translational, biomarker, or assay development team to translate a research question into a feasible, scientifically rigorous collection protocol. That protocol typically defines the target subject population (including disease subtype, stage, treatment history, and biomarker status), the specimen types and processing parameters, the timing and number of collection visits, the clinical data fields to be captured, and the shipping and storage logistics.

Once a protocol is agreed upon, MT Group activates its global site network to enroll subjects, collect specimens to specification, and ship samples to the sponsor's laboratory or designated central lab. Throughout the study, MT Group's clinical data team verifies that annotations are complete and internally consistent, that pathology matches the stated diagnosis, and that the specimen record meets the requirements of downstream assays. Board-certified pathologist quality control is performed on every block.

This consultative model is the reason MT Group's collections are referred to internally and by sponsors as "customized" rather than "custom." Over 23 years, the company has executed customized collections across more than 50 disease indications, including the major solid tumors (breast, colorectal, lung, prostate, hepatocellular carcinoma, pancreatic, ovarian, melanoma, gastric, head and neck, renal cell, bladder, endometrial, and sarcoma), hematologic malignancies, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases (atopic dermatitis, hidradenitis suppurativa, prurigo nodularis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, chronic urticaria, and others), metabolic, neurologic, cardiovascular conditions, and infectious disease.

Capabilities Behind the Milestone

The 5,000+ customized collections completed to date span the full range of human biospecimens used in translational research and diagnostic development:

Tumor tissue. MT Group provides FFPE tumor blocks and slides, fresh tumor tissue (viable tissue for organoid generation, ex vivo pharmacology, and dissociation into single cell suspensions), snap-frozen tumor tissue for molecular extraction, OCT-embedded frozen tissue for cryosectioning and spatial biology, and matched tumor-adjacent normal tissue. Treatment-naive tumor procurement is available for sponsors validating early-detection assays, baseline biomarker discovery programs, and pre-treatment cohorts in immuno-oncology and antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) target validation. Pathologist-reviewed quality control includes tumor content estimation, necrosis assessment, fixative confirmation, and morphology review.

Liquid biopsy specimens. MT Group is a long-standing supplier to liquid biopsy assay developers, with collection workflows for circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) plasma in Streck Cell-Free DNA BCT and EDTA tubes, double-spun plasma for cell-free DNA and cell-free RNA applications, plasma for circulating tumor cell (CTC) enrichment, serum for protein biomarker discovery, and PBMCs and buffy coat for genomic baseline matching. The company's heritage as a consultant during the launch of the CellSearch CTC platform (now Menarini Silicon Biosystems) informs its preanalytical SOPs for liquid biopsy collection. Matched tissue and longitudinal plasma architectures — including pre-treatment baseline, on-therapy, and surveillance timepoints — are a particular strength and are widely used by minimal residual disease (MRD), early cancer detection, and treatment-monitoring assay developers.

Whole blood. Fresh whole blood for research is shipped overnight from collection sites to sponsor laboratories in EDTA, sodium citrate, sodium and lithium heparin, ACD, and other collection tubes for immune cell functional assays, flow cytometry, single-cell sequencing, and cell therapy starting material applications.

Specimens from non-oncology indications. Beyond oncology, MT Group's customized collection portfolio includes skin biopsies and matching blood from patients with hidradenitis suppurativa, prurigo nodularis, atopic dermatitis, psoriasis, alopecia areata, vitiligo, and cutaneous lupus; gastrointestinal biopsies and surgical resections for inflammatory bowel disease research; synovial tissue and fluid from patients with rheumatoid arthritis; and biofluids from patients with Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, and other neurodegenerative and neuroimmune conditions.

Control populations. Customized collections regularly include matched control populations alongside disease cohorts. MT Group provides healthy donor specimens, age- and sex-matched controls, disease-negative controls, at-risk, high-risk, and pre-disease subjects, and normal adjacent tissue from the same donor as the diseased specimen. Control cohorts are essential for analytical specificity testing, assay cutoff determination, biomarker validation, and machine learning model training, and are designed in parallel with the disease arm of every study so that demographics, comorbidities, lifestyle factors, and collection logistics align with the case population.

Longitudinal cohorts. MT Group achieves greater than 90% subject retention in longitudinal studies, enabling sponsors to track treatment response, disease progression, and biomarker dynamics across multiple visits. Pre-treatment baseline, on-therapy, response assessment, and post-treatment surveillance timepoints are standard architectures.

Customized clinical annotation. Every customized collection is delivered with a clinical dataset built around the sponsor's specifications. Standard fields include demographics, diagnosis with date, complete treatment history, comorbidities, concomitant medications, lifestyle factors, laboratory values, disease-specific staging or activity scores, and pathology details. Sponsors can request expansions to capture biomarker results, scan-based response harmonization, patient-reported outcomes, longitudinal lab values, and other non-standard fields. All clinical data is validated by MT Group's dedicated clinical data team before specimen release.

Designed for Translational Research, Biomarker Discovery, and Companion Diagnostic Development

MT Group's customized collections are used across the translational research and diagnostic development continuum. Common use cases include:

• Liquid biopsy assay development and validation, including ctDNA, cell-free RNA, methylation, fragmentomics, multi-cancer early detection (MCED), tumor-informed and tumor-agnostic minimal residual disease (MRD), and circulating tumor cell platforms.
• Companion diagnostic and complementary diagnostic development, including FFPE tumor cohorts for IHC assay optimization, concordance studies, and analytical and clinical validation support for translational programs.
• Biomarker discovery and validation in immuno-oncology, autoimmune disease, and fibrosis, including matched tissue and blood from treatment-naive and treatment-experienced cohorts.
• Single-cell and spatial biology platform validation, including snap-frozen tissue, OCT-embedded tissue, and matched FFPE for spatial transcriptomics, multiplex IHC, imaging mass cytometry, and high-plex proteomics workflows.
• Algorithm training and machine learning datasets for digital pathology, AI-driven image analysis, and computational biology platforms requiring large, well-annotated tissue and clinical datasets.

A Specialty CRO, Not a Commodity Vendor

The biospecimen industry has expanded substantially over the past decade, with a wave of new suppliers entering the market. MT Group has positioned itself away from commodity competition, focusing instead on the studies that catalog vendors and lower-cost suppliers cannot serve: prospective collections with narrow inclusion and exclusion criteria, longitudinal architectures, deep clinical annotation, fresh and viable specimens, and indication areas where domestic US community oncology and clinical lab networks fall short.

"There's a place in this market for catalog inventory and for fast, low-cost archived samples — we maintain a biobank ourselves for exactly that reason," said Dr. Tom Moss, MT Group's Medical Director. "But the work that moves a translational program forward, that gets a companion diagnostic to validation, that enables a liquid biopsy company to expand into a new indication — that's almost always a customized collection. That's where we focus, and that's where 23 years of doing this consistently has built capabilities other suppliers don't have."

Looking Forward

MT Group plans to release additional updates throughout 2026 highlighting expansions in its autoimmune, dermatology, and neurodegenerative portfolios, as well as new capabilities supporting matched tissue and liquid biopsy programs in early cancer detection and minimal residual disease.

Sponsors interested in scoping a customized biospecimen collection are invited to contact MT Group through the company's website at https://mtgroupbio.com/contact. Initial study design consultations are provided at no cost, and sponsors can engage MT Group with anything from a fully scoped protocol to an early-stage research question.

About MT Group

MT Group is a specialty biospecimen contract research organization founded in 2003, providing clinically annotated human biospecimens to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, in vitro diagnostics (IVD), and life sciences research organizations worldwide. The company operates a global collection network supporting customized prospective biospecimen collections — including FFPE tumor tissue, fresh and frozen tumor, plasma, serum, whole blood, PBMCs, buffy coat, urine, saliva, and other biofluids — alongside a standing biobank inventory of clinically characterized samples. Every block and biofluid is supported by board-certified pathologist H&E quality control and dedicated clinical data validation. MT Group's customized collection service is built around consultative study design, narrow inclusion and exclusion criteria, longitudinal multi-timepoint architectures, and deep custom clinical annotation. When you need something specific, MT Group is the group to talk to. Learn more at https://mtgroupbio.com.

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