{"entity":{"id":"idea-tr2-multilab-preclinical","kind":"idea","name":"Multi-laboratory preclinical trials as the standard for go/no-go decisions","aka":[],"tldr":"Instead of one lab's mouse study deciding whether a drug goes to patients, several labs run the same protocol independently, like a multi-centre clinical trial for mice.","summary":"Multi-centre preclinical randomised trials (for example the Multi-PART stroke consortium and EQIPD in Europe) show that effect sizes shrink and heterogeneity appears when protocols are run across sites, exposing fragile findings before they reach patients. In oncology, a standing network of laboratories that runs pre-registered, blinded, multi-site efficacy studies for compounds approaching translation would replace single-lab evidence with robust estimates.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"EQIPD","url":"https://eqipd.org/"}],"tags":[],"related":["idea-tr2-replication-before-ind","champions-oncology"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":["pdx-models"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-reproducibility","b-preclinical-models"],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"Effect sizes from multi-lab studies will predict early clinical activity better than the originating lab's results, and at least a third of compounds will show effects too small or inconsistent across sites to justify clinical testing.","rationale":"Heterogeneity between sites is a feature: findings that survive it are the ones likely to survive human heterogeneity.","test":"Run ten compounds through a five-lab network with pre-registered protocols; compare effect sizes with the original publications and with subsequent clinical outcomes.","maturity":"early-clinical","actor":"research","cost":"medium","horizonYears":3},"route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-multilab-preclinical/","neighbours":{"idea":[{"id":"idea-tr2-arrive-audit","kind":"idea","name":"Audit animal studies for randomisation and blinding, published by institution","route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-arrive-audit/"},{"id":"idea-tr2-replication-before-ind","kind":"idea","name":"Independent replication of the key experiment before first-in-human academic trials","route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-replication-before-ind/"},{"id":"idea-tr2-two-lab-rule","kind":"idea","name":"Top journals require an independent lab to reproduce key findings before publication","route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-two-lab-rule/"}],"company":[{"id":"champions-oncology","kind":"company","name":"Champions Oncology","route":"/companies/champions-oncology/"}],"technology":[{"id":"pdx-models","kind":"technology","name":"Patient-derived xenografts","route":"/technologies/pdx-models/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-preclinical-models","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Lab models that fail to predict what happens in patients","route":"/bottlenecks/b-preclinical-models/"},{"id":"b-reproducibility","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Preclinical results do not reproduce","route":"/bottlenecks/b-reproducibility/"}]}}