Tweet
ShareA multi-disciplinary collaboration, including PETA Science Consortium International’s work, has received the US National Institutes of Health Replication Prize recognising innovative strategies that increase replicability in biomedical research. The team—spanning representatives from industry and academia—was recognised under the Track Two: Replication Exemplars category for advancing research replicability through the adoption of animal-free and animal-production-free recombinant antibodies.
Traditional animal-derived antibodies have historically contributed to the replicability crisis in research due to their batch-to-batch variability, undefined composition, and poor validation. As widely used research tools, replacing them with reliable animal-free and animal-production-free recombinant antibodies is a vital component of addressing research replicability.
The team’s initiatives to advance the development and use of recombinant antibodies consists of three key dimensions: (1) developing new fully-human recombinant antibodies to ensure consistency and specificity; (2) characterising and adopting these reagents within research projects and commercial supply chains; and (3) integrating recombinant antibodies into laboratory curricula, thus introducing students to the principles of antibody reproducibility.
In addition to Science Consortium representatives, the team includes Abcalis, Abcam, ABCD Antibodies, the French Center for the 3Rs (FC3R), the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), Technische Universität Berlin, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Unilever, the University of Geneva, and Utrecht University. Collectively, the team has decades of experience in antibody discovery and engineering, assay development, characterisation, regulatory science, education, and open science infrastructure.
The news follows a Science Consortium publication showing the availability of catalogue recombinant antibodies that can readily replace many of the most commonly used animal-derived antibodies in scientific research. For more information about the Science Consortium’s work in this area, including resources for finding commercially-available animal-free antibodies, click here.