The recent flurry of high-profile articles raising concerns about commercial antibodies has really brought the issue of antibody validation to the fore.

Articles across scientific blogs, feeds and journals such as Nature and Science have highlighted issues ranging from image-manipulation to antibody mix-ups due to confusion over protein names.

To help drive forward practical support, YCharOS and Only Good Antibodies have worked hard to raise awareness around best practices for performing antibody validation, including defining community agreed protocols, and offer training  and tools, which can be accessed by all.

If as a focused cancer research community we can embed antibody validation practices, we can protect the integrity of our research while also positively impacting sustainability and animal welfare goals. Critically it will also enable us to derive maximum benefit for patients from the research funded through CRUK.

Putting validation into practice

As a Bioscience group leader within the Therapeutic Innovation team of Cancer Research Horizons, my focus is on translating outstanding academic science, driving drug discovery programmes that will lead to benefit for patients. Successful validation of those initial scientific hypotheses is often dependent on whether robust, well validated reagents were used. With greater confidence in early discovery science and the knowledge that validated reagents have been used, and are available, we can de-risk translational programmes earlier and faster.

Once drug discovery programmes are initiated, it is critical that we have robust well validated reagents for further evaluation of target modulation and efficacy, in addition to deepening mechanistic studies. Without performing robust antibody validation, we risk slowing the pace of discovery and drug development.

We have therefore worked, using input from many of the resources freely available from Only Good Antibodies, to ensure that clear guidance around antibody validation is in place for our teams within Therapeutic Innovations. We will also introduce a standardised format for recording antibody validation, which is embedded within our electronic notebooks.

I think many scientists still have a perception that performing upfront validation may delay delivery of data and lead to additional costs being incurred. The truth is it is an essential step, that if omitted, will cost not only significant time delays further on, but also additional expenditure and waste.

I would encourage all researchers to think about building in upfront antibody validation into their research proposal timelines and budget, and to make best use of independent sources of antibody validation information such as the OGA antibody database when selecting antibodies.