# Set aside 3% of grant budgets to replicate findings before translation

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-replication-set-aside/  
OnCo record `idea-fund-replication-set-aside` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Before spending millions to turn a lab finding into a drug, spend a little to have an independent lab check it is real. Funders would reserve a small slice of money for exactly this.

## Summary

Funders reserve 3% of research budgets for independent, pre-registered replications of high-impact preclinical findings that are about to receive translational investment (IND-enabling work, company formation, phase 1). Replication is done by contract labs or a network of academic 'replication cores' with blinded protocols agreed with the original authors. The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology found that many landmark effects were smaller or absent when repeated; catching this before translation saves far more than it costs.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Systematic replication before translational investment finds at least 30% of candidate findings non-reproducible or materially weaker, and translational programmes that pass replication reach phase 1 with fewer late-stage preclinical failures than unreplicated ones.
- Rationale: The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology reproduced effects at roughly half the original magnitude on average; Bayer and Amgen internal replication efforts reported majority failure. Independent verification is standard before major capital deployment in every other industry.
- Proposed test: Pilot with one translational fund: replicate the key experiment for every asset before IND-enabling money is released, and compare downstream attrition with the fund's historical record.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: research

## Sources

- Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology: https://www.cos.io/rpcb

## Connected records

- ideas: [A fast IND-enabling fund that pays for toxicology and manufacturing in eight weeks](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-ind-enabling-fund/), [A funded organoid and PDX panel as the go/no-go gate before IND-enabling money](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-organoid-translation-gate/), [A pre-competitive consortium to validate or kill academic targets before licensing](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-target-validation-consortium/)
- technologies: [CRISPR functional genomics](https://onco.cc/technologies/crispr-screens/), [Patient-derived organoids](https://onco.cc/technologies/organoids/), [Patient-derived xenografts](https://onco.cc/technologies/pdx-models/)
- bottlenecks: [Funding follows fashion, not burden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/), [Preclinical results do not reproduce](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-reproducibility/), [The valley of death between lab and product](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-translational-valley/)

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