22 June 2021

by Marcia Triunfol

Prof. Dr Hans Clevers is one of the pioneers in the research of adult stem cells and the developer of the first organoids (self-organizing three-dimensional tissue cultures derived from stem cells). A scientist at the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands, Prof. Dr Clevers believes that, for biomedical research, the shift from animal models to adoption of human-relevant approaches is well underway. In his lab only 10% of the experiments currently underway are animal-based and most of the new projects rely on technologies that are not done in vivo but instead use models such as organoids. [Read more…]

A study of media coverage of 623 scientific papers on Alzheimer’s disease research conducted in mice reveals that the digital news media are more likely to write a story about alleged breakthroughs or medical research findings if research authors omit mice from their studies’ titles. On the other hand, papers that acknowledge mice in their titles result in limited media coverage.

In addition, the study titled “What’s not in the news headlines or titles of Alzheimer disease articles? #Inmice”conducted by Dr Marcia Triunfol of Humane Society International and Dr Fabio Gouveia of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil, and published in PLoS Biology, found that the resulting media coverage generated by papers with “missing mice” titles is also more likely to omit mice from their headlines.

This is of concern because scientific findings obtained from animal experiments should be reported with caution due to their limited relevance to human health. The biology and physiology of mice and other animals differ significantly to that of humans, such that research results obtained in animals often fail to be replicated in people. Despite that, the scientific value of articles downplaying that they relied on animal models is actually inflated by their disproportionate media exposure, raising concerns that the public and patients are being misled.

Dr Triunfol, one of the study’s authors and Humane Society International’s scientific advisor, says: “There are around 200 animal models to study Alzheimer’s disease, and yet the vast majority of potential treatments discovered through experiments on mice are ineffective when tested in humans. Despite this significant flaw in the animal models, we show that articles glossing over the fact that the results were obtained using animals are given increased visibility and therefore implied credibility by the media. The reporting of animal research needs to be addressed with far greater caution and more prominent disclaimers in mainstream media to ensure the public understands that the results of animal experiments may have little to no relevance to human patients.” [Read more…]

23 April 2021

Publication bias: the problem that won’t go away. That’s the title of a 1993 study by Kay Dickersin, then at the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and Yuan-I Min at the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University. In their study, published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, the two authors define publication bias as “any tendency on the parts of investigators or editors to fail to publish study results on the basis of the direction or strength of the study findings.” More than 25 years later, not only is the problem of publication bias as they defined it still with us, it has metamorphosized into new forms.

Currently, publication bias is recognized as the preference of journals for publishing studies with positive results while rejecting those with negative ones. According to the Catalogue of Bias, a database that defines and lists examples of more than 10 different types of biases in health sciences, publication bias happens “when the likelihood of a study being published is affected by the findings of the study.” In a variant form, publication bias favors publication of papers distorted by spin that impacts their findings or interpretations. Spin might include manipulation of figures, selective reporting of outcomes, among others.

[Read more…]

2 March 2021

The extraordinary proliferation of scientific research prompted by the global pandemic has brought the need for advanced systems for organizing scientific information into focus. To address this pressing need, Humane Society International joined the innovative crowd-sourcing CIAO project (“Modelling the Pathogenesis of COVID-19 using the Adverse Outcome Pathway framework”), working in cooperation with the European Joint Research Center, the Karolinska Institute and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

COVID-19 has proven to be a great challenge for medicine, especially with respect to the urgency of efforts to understand its underlying biological processes and the complex range of patient outcomes dependent on so many external factors.

CIAO is a global effort to systematize the wealth of knowledge now accumulating on SARS-CoV-2, give it structure, meaning and accessibility, and maximize its utility to researchers and clinicians worldwide, enabling stakeholders to avoid duplication of research and accelerate progress to develop treatments and vaccines.

In 2020 alone, scientific efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in tens of thousands of papers published. This deluge of information has to some extent overwhelmed researchers, effectively hampering their ability to sift through results, retrieve critical and valuable information, and integrate their findings into a coherent, intelligible and broader structure. [Read more…]

18 February 2021

The contributions of leading Indian research scientists and other stakeholders to the development, funding and advancement of non-animal, human-based technologies were the central focus of a   December 2020 BioMed21 roundtable discussion. The event was organized by the Centre for Predictive Human Model Systems, a collaboration between the Atal Incubation Centre at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and Humane Society International/India. The focus of the CPHMS partnership is on shifting from an observational paradigm to a predictive paradigm for biomedical research and drug discovery.

Dr. Rakesh Mishra, CCMB director, opened the roundtable with remarks emphasizing that innovative technologies based on human biology are no longer aspirational goals for a distant future but ready for implementation in India today. Compared to other preclinical approaches, Dr. Mishra remarked, advanced cell-culture methods and improved genomic understanding can lead to more precise drug discovery programs and better outcomes.

In her presentation, senior CPHMS research associate Dr. Surat Parvatam explained how data generated from human-relevant contexts can be applied to predict biological consequences for drug discovery. The work of CPHMS is centered on three areas: enabling the use of human-relevant methodologies; promoting the use of frameworks that integrate existing data (like the Adverse Outcome Pathways approach of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development); and advancing use of computational tools to build predictive models of human biology. Dr. Parvatam identified the lack of dialogue between multidisciplinary stakeholders as one of the main challenges and shared her vision of the roundtable meeting as the first step toward bridging this gap. [Read more…]