American Type Culture Collection - Biological Materials

Biological Materials

ATCC serves U.S. and international researchers by characterizing cell lines, bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa, as well as developing and evaluating assays and techniques for validating research resources and preserving and distributing biological materials to the public and private sector research communities. Their management philosophy emphasizes customer satisfaction, value addition, cost-effective operations and competitive benchmarking for all areas of the enterprise.

ATCC’s collections include a wide range of biological materials for research, including cell lines, molecular genomics tools, microorganisms and bioproducts. The organization holds a collection of more than 4,000 human, animal and plant cell lines and an additional 1,200 hybridomas. The molecular genomics collection at ATCC contains 8 million cloned genes from a host of species, including human, mouse, soybean, rat, monkey, zebrafish and several disease vectors. ATCC’s microorganism collection includes a collection of more than 18,000 strains of bacteria from 900 genera, as well as 2,000 different types of animal viruses and 1,000 plant viruses. In addition, ATCC maintains collections of protozoans, yeasts and fungi with over 49,000 yeast and fungi strains from 1,500 genera and 2,000 strains of protists.

In addition to serving as a biorepository and distributor, ATCC provides specialized services related to its overall mission as a biological resource center. Individuals and groups can employ a safe deposit service for their own cell cultures, providing a secure back-up for valuable biomaterials on a cGMP basis if required. ATCC also is able to retain secure samples of patented materials and distribute them according to instructions and approval of the patent holder. ATCC provides expert biological repository management services to institutions, agencies and companies wishing to outsource the handling of their own culture collections.