Improving the integrity and reproducibility of research that uses antibodies: a technical, data sharing, behavioral and policy challenge

Antibodies are one of the most important reagents used in biomedical and fundamental research, used to identify, and quantify proteins, contribute to knowledge of disease mechanisms, and validate drug targets. Yet many antibodies used in research do not recognize their intended target, or recognize additional molecules, compromising the integrity of research findings and leading to waste of resources, lack of reproducibility, failure of research projects, and delays in drug development. Researchers frequently use antibodies without confirming that they perform as intended in their application of interest. Here we argue that the determinants of end-user antibody choice and use are critical, and under-addressed, behavioral drivers of this problem. This interacts with the batch-to-batch variability of these biological reagents, and the paucity of available characterization data for most antibodies, making it more difficult for researchers to choose high quality reagents and perform necessary validation experiments. The open-science company YCharOS works with major antibody manufacturers and knockout cell line producers to characterize antibodies, identifying high-performing renewable antibodies for many targets in neuroscience. This shows the progress that can be made by stakeholders working together. However, their work so far applies to only a tiny fraction of available antibodies. Where characterization data exists, end-users need help to find and use it appropriately. While progress has been made in the context of technical solutions and antibody characterization, we argue that initiatives to make best practice behaviors by researchers more feasible, easy, and rewarding are needed. Global cooperation and coordination between multiple partners and stakeholders will be crucial to address the technical, policy, behavioral, and open data sharing challenges. We offer potential solutions by describing our Only Good Antibodies initiative, a community of researchers and partner organizations working toward the necessary change. We conclude with an open invitation for stakeholders, including researchers, to join our cause. </p

Improving the integrity and reproducibility of research that uses antibodies: a technical, data sharing, behavioral and policy challenge

Antibodies are one of the most important reagents used in biomedical and fundamental research, used to identify, and quantify proteins, contribute to knowledge of disease mechanisms, and validate drug targets. Yet many antibodies used in research do not recognize their intended target, or recognize additional molecules, compromising the integrity of research findings and leading to waste of resources, lack of reproducibility, failure of research projects, and delays in drug development. Researchers frequently use antibodies without confirming that they perform as intended in their application of interest. Here we argue that the determinants of end-user antibody choice and use are critical, and under-addressed, behavioral drivers of this problem. This interacts with the batch-to-batch variability of these biological reagents, and the paucity of available characterization data for most antibodies, making it more difficult for researchers to choose high quality reagents and perform necessary validation experiments. The open-science company YCharOS works with major antibody manufacturers and knockout cell line producers to characterize antibodies, identifying high-performing renewable antibodies for many targets in neuroscience. This shows the progress that can be made by stakeholders working together. However, their work so far applies to only a tiny fraction of available antibodies. Where characterization data exists, end-users need help to find and use it appropriately. While progress has been made in the context of technical solutions and antibody characterization, we argue that initiatives to make best practice behaviors by researchers more feasible, easy, and rewarding are needed. Global cooperation and coordination between multiple partners and stakeholders will be crucial to address the technical, policy, behavioral, and open data sharing challenges. We offer potential solutions by describing our Only Good Antibodies initiative, a community of researchers and partner organizations working toward the necessary change. We conclude with an open invitation for stakeholders, including researchers, to join our cause. </p

Scaling of an antibody validation procedure enables quantification of antibody performance in major research applications.

Antibodies are critical reagents to detect and characterize proteins. It is commonly understood that many commercial antibodies do not recognize their intended targets, but information on the scope of the problem remains largely anecdotal, and as such, feasibility of the goal of at least one potent and specific antibody targeting each protein in a proteome cannot be assessed. Focusing on antibodies for human proteins, we have scaled a standardized characterization approach using parental and knockout cell lines (Laflamme et al., 2019) to assess the performance of 614 commercial antibodies for 65 neuroscience-related proteins. Side-by-side comparisons of all antibodies against each target, obtained from multiple commercial partners, have demonstrated that: (i) more than 50% of all antibodies failed in one or more applications, (ii) yet, ~50-75% of the protein set was covered by at least one high-performing antibody, depending on application, suggesting that coverage of human proteins by commercial antibodies is significant; and (iii) recombinant antibodies performed better than monoclonal or polyclonal antibodies. The hundreds of underperforming antibodies identified in this study were found to have been used in a large number of published articles, which should raise alarm. Encouragingly, more than half of the underperforming commercial antibodies were reassessed by the manufacturers, and many had alterations to their recommended usage or were removed from the market. This first study helps demonstrate the scale of the antibody specificity problem but also suggests an efficient strategy toward achieving coverage of the human proteome; mine the existing commercial antibody repertoire, and use the data to focus new renewable antibody generation efforts

Science Forum: Antibody characterization is critical to enhance reproducibility in biomedical research

Antibodies are used in many areas of biomedical and clinical research, but many of these antibodies have not been adequately characterized, which casts doubt on the results reported in many scientific papers. This problem is compounded by a lack of suitable control experiments in many studies. In this article we review the history of the ‘antibody characterization crisis’, and we document efforts and initiatives to address the problem, notably for antibodies that target human proteins. We also present recommendations for a range of stakeholders – researchers, universities, journals, antibody vendors and repositories, scientific societies and funders – to increase the reproducibility of studies that rely on antibodies.</p