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Majority of Landmark Cancer Studies Cannot Be Replicated
New submitter Beeftopia writes with perhaps distressing news about cancer research. From the article: "During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 'landmark' publications — papers in top journals, from reputable labs — for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development. Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated. He described his findings in a commentary piece published on Wednesday in the journal Nature (paywalled) . ... But they and others fear the phenomenon is the product of a skewed system of incentives that has academics cutting corners to further their careers."
As is the fashion at Nature, you can only read the actual article if you are a subscriber or want to fork over $32. Anyone with access care to provide more insight?
Update: 04/06 14:00 GMT by U L : Naffer pointed us toward informative commentary in Pipeline. Thanks!
And look at many of the complaints he has about academic research in this 'paper'.
"In addition, preclinical testing rarely includes predictive biomarkers that, when advanced to clinical trials, will help to distinguish those patients who are likely to benefit from a drug."
When I publish a paper, I'm trying to present the the interesting findings in regards to the molecular system I'm studying. Finding a bunch of associated biomarkers is an entirely different study. If you expect me to write multiple studies/papers rolled into one and replicate the experiments over and over in dozens of cell lines and animal models, you better be paying me to do it, because I don't have the funding for that in the small budget I got for the proposed study funded by taxpayers through the NIH. When I wrote the grant to do the study, I didn't even know I would find anything for sure, so I didn't ask for a budget 20x the size so I could replicate it in every model out there to look for biomarkers as well, just in case I found something. Asking for that is a good way to have your grant rejected in the first place. My paper was to find the interesting thing. By publishing it I'm saying, 'we found something interesting, please fund us or other researchers to take the next step and replicate, test in other systems, etc, etc. Publishing my results does not mean 'Big Pharma should go ahead and spend $10 million trying this in humans right now!'
"Given the inherent difficulties of mimicking the human micro-environment in preclinical research, reviewers and editors should demand greater thoroughness."
It's tough to do. That's why we typically do small bite-size chunks. That and the size of our grants allow us to do the bite-size chunks. Want greater thouroughness? Increase our funding. Ohh, but that's from taxpayers, and you want them to spend all the money doing research so you don't have to.
"Studies should not be published using a single cell line or model, but should include a number of well-characterized cancer cell lines that are representative of the intended patient population. Cancer researchers must commit to making the difficult, time-consuming and costly transition towards new research tools, as well as adopting more robust, predictive tumour models and improved validation strategies. "
Cancer researchers must commit to the costly transition? Yes, yes, research is being held up because all those academics, with all their mega-millions in earnings each year, just aren't willing to pony up the cash to do their experiments right. We live off grants. If there isn't funding to do a huge study, we can't. Simple. No 'not willing to commit' involved.
"Similarly, efforts to identify patient-selection biomarkers should be mandatory at the outset of drug development."
Once again, the budget for that wasn't in my grant because I didn't know I would even find anything, let alone need to find every associated biomarker. Want to know the biomarkers? Then pay for it, or wait for me to publish this first paper, then write another grant asking for funding to look for biomarkers now that I've got a very good reason to look for them and spend the money. In a rush? Either pony up the cash or stop whining about taxpayer-funded academics not providing everything to you on a silver platter in record time.