Workshop Day

Software Solutions for the Animal Study Reproducibility Crisis & Enhanced Animal Welfare 09:00 - 12:00

According to a 2012 study published by Amgen researchers, 90% of the 50+ in vivo oncology studies were found to be irreproducible. Additionally, 95% of post-phase III clinical trial therapies in oncology have historically failed to receive regulatory approval due to a lack of demonstrated efficacy, not toxicity. This underscores the dire need to critically examine our current standard animal study conduct processes to both identify the causes contributing to the poor animal study irreproducibility and implement meaningful and effective solutions. Over the last several years, questions and debates concerning the validity of the preclinical science data have resulted in multiple published reviews on the problem. The reasons for this “Crisis of Animal Study Irreproducibility” are manifold but there are also several potential solutions available to mitigate these problems as well.

In this talk the following points will be discussed:

• Factors contributing to the problem of animal study irreproducibility.
• Publicly-available and online resources and practically-applicable concepts, such as the ARRIVE guidelines, PHISPS protocols, and the N3R Design Assistant.
• First-hand experiences with a variety of in-house-built and commercially available animal study workflow software applications and databases and their direct and indirect impacts on the problems contributing to animal study irreproducibility.
• Hands-on exploration and learning about Studylog Animal Study Workflow Software in the context of solving problems, improving animal study reproducibility and faithfully preserving detailed study results for future access.Researchers will walk away from the talk with an understanding of the factors which contribute to poor animal study reproducibility. They will also learn about the application of the latest public online tools to mitigate reproducibility problems. This will include learning about the benefits and challenges of home-built software and off-the-shelf animal study management technologies. Attendees will also get to experience and see for themselves how animal study workflow software, such as Studylog v4, can help solve many of the problems of study reproducibility, while easily standardizing the processes of detailed study design planning and study
  conduct, making adherence to and oversight of procedures easier, facilitating faster, easier and more detailed data collection and documentation, standardizing animal welfare parameter monitoring, data analyses, report creation, task and scheduling, as well as data preservation and access.