Introducing the Affinity Binder Knockdown Initiative—A public–private partnership for validation of affinity reagents

Abstract

The newly launched Affinity Binder Knockdown Initiative encourages antibody suppliers and users to join this public–private partnership, which uses crowdsourcing to collect characterization data on antibodies. Researchers are asked to share validation data from experiments where gene-editing techniques (such as siRNA or CRISPR) have been used to verify antibody binding. The initiative is launched under the aegis of Antibodypedia, a database designed to allow comparisons and scoring of publicly available antibodies towards human protein targets. What is known about an antibody is the foundation of the scoring and ranking system in Antibodypedia.

Keywords

• Antibody quality
• Validation
• Reproducibility
• Crowdsourcing
• siRNA
• CRISPR