Designing Animal Experiments

As you are aware there is a problem of translating the basic science into benefit. This is the case of MS drugs too. 

There is no doubt that some of the problems are due to the animal experiments and some studies would not be reproducible from lab to lab let alone animal to human.


The Experimental Design Assistant (Click), is a new free resource from the NC3Rs to support researchers in the planning of animal experiments - ensuring robust study design and reliable and reproducible findings.

This may be of interest to MS researchers working with animals.

The EDA consists of a web application and a supporting website; benefits include: The ability to build a stepwise visual representation of your experiment. 

Feedback and advice on your experimental plan. 

This is going to be an interesting one? 

Dedicated support for randomisation, blinding and sample size calculation. Practical information to improve knowledge of experimental design. Improved transparency of your experimental design, allowing you to share and discuss your plan with colleagues and collaborators

This could be useful, but it could also become an albatross for UK researchers who may be made to do this by well meaning Home Office Inspectors.

Are you going to discuss your secret experiments with your competitors of course you are not. 

There is a move to have animal experiments registered like clinical trials.gov. But are you going to tell everyone about your ideas for inventions before they become inventions? 

Pharma will run a mile from these shores if this ever comes into being, but hey they have run a mile from these shores already as there major pharma doing MS work are no uK based.

Check the video tutorials and the user guide for general information on the EDA process. Find out more about the background for this project. 

Will this help is developing MS drugs?

We will register a hypothetical study to test an immune modulating drug and lets see what we get? 

Will it be a great idea or a turkey?

The ARRIVE guidelines on reporting is a good idea but has not been fully adopted because this asks for a behaviour which no body does. Therefore, asking for too much at once. This arose probably because the authors were not people doing many animal experiments. 

Will this be the same?

Maybe they should do an EDA for clinical trials as it seems to me this is where the failure to translate animal experiments becomes a problem and it is not a problem only found in MS, it is the case all over the placw.

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