Public-private partnerships are reshaping cancer early detection, pairing research scale with operational infrastructure to accelerate impact.
Corporate executives are finally paying attention to early disease detection, and not for altruistic reasons. Healthcare costs are rising. Insurance premiums are climbing. Productivity losses from late-stage diagnoses are showing up in quarterly performance metrics. Pancreatic cancer demonstrates the cost of failure here: when you catch it late, survival rates stay below 15 percent, and treatment expenses become ruinous.
The PRECEDE Consortium exists to solve this problem. We have enrolled over 10,000 high-risk individuals across more than 60 academic medical centers, making PRECEDE the largest collaborative research effort in pancreatic cancer early detection. Our goal is to raise the five-year survival rate from 13 percent to 50 percent. If we succeed, we will reduce catastrophic diagnoses, cut long-term treatment costs, and improve workforce health outcomes in measurable ways.
What It Actually Takes to Scale
Achieving that goal requires sample management infrastructure that most people do not think about. Biological samples—blood, tissue, DNA—must be stored, tracked, and managed with absolute precision because every discovery depends on sample integrity. This is not optional. Compromise the samples and the science fails.
PRECEDE recently partnered with Azenta Life Sciences to build this foundation. Azenta operates global biorepository networks, and their role here is straightforward: provide the industrial-grade systems that allow early detection research to function at scale. Think of biorepositories as the data centers of life sciences. Without them, research stalls regardless of how talented your investigators are.
Azenta’s network gives PRECEDE the capacity to store tens of thousands of samples, manage logistics across 60+ study sites, maintain enterprise-level traceability, and ensure continuity as we expand from 10,000 to 20,000 participants. Every sample is irreplaceable. Azenta’s systems keep them viable and accessible to our international research community.
This infrastructure is not a technical detail. It is the only reason large-scale early detection research can advance. Scientific talent matters. So do the operational partnerships that make collaboration work rather than collapse under its own complexity.
Collaboration Is Now a Competitive Requirement
The old model of siloed research is dying because it cannot deliver results fast enough. Public-private partnerships accelerate timelines, reduce risk, and produce measurable returns. The PRECEDE-Azenta partnership demonstrates this. PRECEDE brings a global high-risk cohort, centralized data sharing, and uniform screening protocols. Azenta provides industrial infrastructure, logistical reliability, and operational continuity across institutions. Together, we have created a model that extends well beyond pancreatic cancer.
PRECEDE has also fundamentally changed how cancer research operates. By centralizing data and creating unified standards for screening, risk modeling, and longitudinal tracking, we have built one of the most powerful collaborative research platforms in existence. Investigators now have access to coordinated insight that no single institution could produce. For private-sector partners, that access represents a genuine strategic advantage.
Some organizations still treat these partnerships as optional or supplementary. That view is incorrect. In healthcare, public-private collaboration has become the primary mechanism for moving innovation from concept to clinical impact. The question is not whether to participate but how quickly to engage.
The Strategic Opportunity for Life Sciences
For life sciences companies, PRECEDE offers access to a global high-risk cohort, robust data infrastructure, and a scientific community working from shared protocols. This combination accelerates discovery, reduces development risk, and provides a validation path for tools, biomarkers, and technologies. Speed and evidence determine competitive advantage in this industry. These partnerships deliver both.
Azenta’s involvement shows what becomes possible when private companies contribute operational capability to research networks of this scale. Private-sector expertise in logistics, data systems, and execution amplifies academic science in ways universities cannot replicate on their own. The result is faster breakthroughs and solutions designed for scale from the beginning.
As PRECEDE expands, the value of participating in this model will increase. Companies that engage now will influence the next generation of early-detection tools, build evidence for emerging technologies, and gain entry to a research ecosystem built for speed and transparency. Those who wait will find themselves working from outside a framework that their competitors helped shape.
The future of biomedical innovation will be determined by organizations willing to collaborate across sectors and combine scientific rigor with operational strength. PRECEDE and Azenta are demonstrating what that looks like: a partnership that accelerates progress, infrastructure that enables discovery, and early detection that becomes an operational reality rather than research aspiration. Not every partnership works, and not every technology will prove viable. But without this model, early detection does not scale at all. The model works. The question is who will use it.
Safe Harbor Statement
This article contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Factors include, but are not limited to, scientific and regulatory challenges, partnership outcomes, market conditions, and other risks detailed in Azenta Life Sciences’ filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Azenta undertakes no obligation to update these statements.
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Margaret Caspler, Executive Director of the PRECEDE Foundation
Margaret A. Caspler is a nonprofit leader with 25+ years in cancer research and healthcare philanthropy. Now at PRECEDE Foundation, she advances collaborative science to accelerate early detection of pancreatic cancer and improve patient outcomes.
Katheryn Shea, Chief Client Solution Officer at Azenta Life Sciences
Katheryn Shea is the repository chief client solutions officer at Azenta Life Sciences. She is a former president of the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) and served on the Advisory Working Group that developed the College of American Pathologists Biorepository Accreditation Program. She has over 30 years of experience leading biorepository programs and advising on the design of biorepositories, quality systems, and optimal methods for collection, preservation, and annotation of biospecimen collections.
