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Each year thousands of biological and medical research projects have to be scrapped because researchers have the wrong antibodies available in the laboratory. A research group at the Department of Biomedicine is behind a new database that intends to help researchers navigate in a chaotic market.
2016.08.10 |
Billions of Danish kroner are wasted every year due to the wrong antibodies. Photo: Jesper Rais, Aarhus University.
Investing in the wrong antibodies for experiments costs researchers – and thus also society – billions in wasted working hours, misleading conclusions and a lack of results. Unreliable antibodies often lead to the development of new medicines being delayed or even halted completely, because the researchers cannot repeat crucial biomedical experiments.
Three hundred manufactures worldwide sell more than 15 million different antibodies prepared in animals, but many antibodies do not deliver what their data sheets promise, and researchers are left in the dark when it comes to ordering them.
This is the view of associate professor in neurobiology at the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University, Simon Glerup. After having himself experienced the bitter disappointment of working with non-specific antibodies, he now heads a research group that will provide both an overview and transparency:
"In between 50 and 90 per cent of cases, researchers are forced to scrap a new antibody and start again after having spent lots of money and several working days testing it. On a worldwide scale, taxpayers, industry and charitable foundations pour somewhere between six and ten billion Danish kroner down the drain in direct costs every year," he says.
Simon Glerup and his team are therefore in the process of building-up a publicly accessible database driven by crowd-sourcing, which provides researchers with a quick overview of good and poor antibodies. Several hundred scientists have already contributed and exchanged data, so that the correct antibodies can be utilised from the beginning.
Simon Glerup has recently presented the database – named pAbmAbs.com – at the FENS Forum, Europe's largest conference for neuroscience, which was held in Copenhagen in July.
Antibodies are proteins that are used to identify, isolate and visualise other molecules. An antibody can recognise a specific protein among thousands of others in the body's organs and tissues, which makes it an indispensable tool in scientific research, in particular in neurological research. But non-specific antibodies can have a potentially destructive effect on the research results.
"The variation in antibodies can mean dramatically different results," says Simon Glerup.
The research community has received the database enthusiastically, with the scientific journal Nature calling it "an evangelist for scientific reproducibility". However, many manufacturers of antibodies have given the new tool a frostier welcome.
"Globally, antibodies cost a dizzying two billion US Dollars a year. The database forces manufacturers to deliver better quality and more detailed information, while at the same time enabling the research community to save a fortune and to spend their time making scientific progress instead of testing useless antibodies," explains Simon Glerup.
In his spare time, the 39-year-old associate professor has taken up the fight against a billion-dollar industry with only volunteer help.
The press release has been received by FENS Forum of Neuroscience.
Associate Professor Simon Glerup
Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University
Mobile: (+45) 5122 1727
glerup@biokemi.au.dk