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At AAAS 2017, a pair of panel discussions addressed the reproducibility crisis in science, particularly biomedical science, and suggested that it is manageable, provided stakeholders continue to demonstrate a commitment to quality. One panel, led by Leonard P. Freedman, Ph.D., president of Global Biological Standards Institute (GBSI), was comprehensive. It prescribed a range of initiatives: Drive quality and ensure greater accountability through strengthened journal and funde

Validating antibodies used in experiments could ‘free up billions of research dollars’, head of standards institute says More than 100 biomedical research experts have met in the US to start developing the first-ever standardised guidelines for using antibodies in science. The differing quality of biological reagents – the chemicals used in experiments – such as antibodies, and the lack of standard approaches to research using them, is thought by many to play a major part in

It seems like the most elementary of research principles: Make sure the cells and reagents in your experiment are what they claim to be and behave as expected. But when it comes to antibodies—the immune proteins used in all kinds of experiments to tag a molecule of interest in a sample—that validation process is not straightforward. Research antibodies from commercial vendors are often screened and optimized for narrow experimental conditions, which means they may not work as