ideasIdea
Only use antibodies proven to hit their target with knockout controls
Many research antibodies do not actually bind what the label says. Independent testing against cells lacking the target can prove it, and journals should require that evidence.
Antibody non-specificity is a leading cause of irreproducible results. Initiatives such as YCharOS test commercial antibodies against knockout cell lines and publish the results, finding that a large fraction of antibodies for a given target fail. A requirement that papers cite knockout- or knockdown-validated antibodies (with the validation record) for key claims, and funder support for a public validation programme covering the most-used cancer targets, would remove a pervasive source of error.
Hypothesis
Papers using validated antibodies will show higher replication rates than those using unvalidated ones, and the requirement will shift the market towards validated reagents within three years.
Rationale
Independent knockout-based validation is decisive and increasingly cheap; the barrier is that journals do not require it and vendors do not publish it.
What would test it
Two journals require validation records for key antibodies; measure compliance and downstream replication in a sample of papers.
Maturity
early clinical
Who has to act
policy
Cost to try
Small (under $1M)
Years to first evidence
2
Bottlenecks it attacks
- Preclinical results do not reproduce · Fewer than half of landmark cancer biology findings reproduce when someone else tries.