Re: Reproducibility: Standardize antibodies used in research

Posted by Feinstein, Timothy on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Reproducibility-Standardize-antibodies-used-in-research-tp7583440p7583443.html

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I could imagine a Œsoft¹ introduction working fine.  These will be far
more expensive than standard antibodies, at least at first, but large
vendors could easily introduce high demand products like anti-smooth
muscle actin as an alternative reagent for people who want to spend more
for extra validation and reproducibility.  The value for diagnostic
medicine would be quite high.   Eventually the economy of scale would make
these accessible to research labs.  As just another new and useful
technology I think it has a lot of use, but I cannot imagine journals
would ever demand that researchers use nothing but.  It will never be
practical to submit every possible type of antibody to cloning and in
vitro synthesis.  

Best,


Tim

Timothy Feinstein, Ph.D. | Manager, Core for
Confocal Microscopy and Quantitative Imaging
333 Bostwick Ave., N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503
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On 2/23/15, 10:13 AM, "Martin Wessendorf" <[hidden email]> wrote:

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>
>George et al.--
>
>On 2/22/2015 11:31 PM, George McNamara wrote:
>> I encourage everyone on the listserv to read Bradbury et al's comment
>> in Nature, and to pass it on to your colleagues who use antibodies and
>> similar reagents.
>>
>> full text is freely available at
>>
>>
>>http://www.nature.com/news/reproducibility-standardize-antibodies-used-in
>>-research-1.16827
>>
>>
>> Summary:
>>
>> *To save millions of dollars and dramatically improve reproducibility,
>> protein-binding reagents must be defined by their sequences and
>> produced as recombinant proteins, say Andrew Bradbury, Andreas
>> Plückthun and 110 co-signatories.*
>>
>
>Interesting idea, as long as you aren't doing research in an area for
>which the soon-to-be required recombinant antibodies aren't available.
>
>To quote from the article, "If these steps are taken, scientists will not
>want to use unsequenced binding reagents, and the absence of sequencing
>information will lead to market disadvantages for vendors. The
>uncharacterized, unsequenced research antibody will become obsolete."
>--Not all antibodies are generated by companies--many of the most
>important are generated by researchers themselves.  This proposal could
>have the effect of forcing most all
>biomedical research down a set of predetermined, prescribed channels,
>with only limited room for development of new reagents.  Their goal is
>worthy, but this policy strikes me as likely to have some unintended bad
>consequences.
>
>Martin Wessendorf
>
>
>--
>Martin Wessendorf, Ph.D.                   office: [phone]
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