Turning Renewed Media Attention on Antibody Validation into an Opportunity for Industry-wide Improvement

As we have discussed in previous blogs, concerns over reproducibility have placed additional scrutiny on the performance of research antibodies over the last several years. That attention has continued to escalate in recent months, fueled by high-profile news stories focused on antibody catalogs and their validation data. It is well known within the industry that maintaining and expanding large antibody collections is not a trivial task, even with rigorous methods and standards. Nevertheless, it is on reagent providers, including ourselves, to recognize the concerns of researchers and use them as motivation to continuously improve antibody development and quality control.

In that vein, the Aviva Systems Biology team wanted to take a moment to reflect again on the importance of antibody validation and briefly discuss mechanisms we use to strengthen the performance of our offerings.

The real cost of irreproducibility

The media attention and the outcry of the scientific community reflect the challenge researchers face every day in evaluating and trusting commercial antibodies and their validation data. More importantly, it illuminates how much scientific validity and utility hinges on well-characterized, reproducible antibody performance.

Issues with antibody consistency and reproducibility aren’t just a headache for researchers—they can directly compromise scientific integrity and efficiency. For example, problematic antibody reagents are believed to account for $350 million of the roughly $28 billion in waste attributed to poorly reproducible research each year.[1] Data produced using poorly validated antibodies are a poor foundation for future work, misdirecting further research efforts. Beyond the wasted material and labor costs of poor science, this issue has broader implications, from delayed drug development to erosion of public trust in science.

The challenges of antibody development and characterization

While antibodies have long served as foundational tools in life science research, their development still introduces numerous opportunities for variability that can ultimately affect experimental reliability. Small differences in how an antibody is generated, from antigen selection to clone screening, can produce reagents with very different binding characteristics, even when they are intended to recognize the same target. Poorly designed or insufficiently characterized antigens can drive the production of antibodies that recognize irrelevant epitopes, fail to distinguish between closely related proteins, or overlook clinically important isoforms and post-translational modifications. Even when an appropriate antigen is used in development, differences in clone selection and production can result in antibodies with markedly different binding properties despite being marketed for the same target.[2] Without thorough characterization, these differences may only become apparent after conflicting or irreproducible results have already entered the literature.

Researchers can (and often do) conduct their own in-house field tests of each new antibody reagent they use, but such validation experiments are additional expenditures of time, labor, and funds. But without an established protocol for vendors to generate and provide validation data, or any mechanism to hold vendors accountable for poor or inaccurate characterization information, scientists are faced with a difficult choice: invest their own resources into validation efforts or take the potential gamble of trusting a supplier’s validation data for their own application.

Fighting for a better approach

At Aviva Systems Biology, we believe researchers should not have to view trust as a difficult choice. Our Enhanced Validation framework is foundational to our efforts to support research reproducibility with consistent, well-characterized antibody reagents. In addition to conventional validation methods, Aviva leverages the Carterra® LSA™ surface plasmon resonance (SPR) platform to characterize many of our recombinant antibodies. We are also proud to partner with YCharOS (Antibody Characterization through Open Science), a non-profit organization aiming to improve antibody reliability and reproducibility in biomedical research.

YCharOS provides extensive, openly shared characterization data of antibody reagents available from many leading vendors, including Aviva. Importantly, its neutral, vendor-agnostic approach positions YCharOS as a trusted resource for researchers across the life sciences. Their rigorous consensus protocol uses knockout (KO) cell lines to characterize the performance of commercial antibodies from different vendors side-by-side across immunofluorescence, immunoprecipitation, and Western blot assays.[3] Any KO validation done through YCharOS is included on our product pages alongside our internal characterization data to provide customers with confidence in their reagents.

Aviva Systems Biology is committed to empowering researchers with the reliable, high-quality antibody tools they need to drive biomedical innovation. As vendors, we believe it is our responsibility to provide customers with trustworthy, thorough validation data and foster a culture of accountability for product performance.

To learn more about our antibody validation approach, contact our representatives to set up a call today.

[1] Biddle, M., et al. “Improving the Integrity and Reproducibility of Research That Uses Antibodies: A Technical, Data Sharing, Behavioral and Policy Challenge.” mAbs, vol. 16, no. 1, 2024, article 2323706, https://doi.org/10.1080/19420862.2024.2323706.

[2] Kahn, Richard A., et al. “Science Forum: Antibody Characterization Is Critical to Enhance Reproducibility in Biomedical Research.” eLife, vol. 13, 2024, e100211, https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.100211.

[3] Ayoubi, R., Ryan, J., Gonzalez Bolivar, S. et al. A consensus platform for antibody characterization. Nat Protoc 20, 1509–1545 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41596-024-01095-8.