Quality in preclinical research: survey among research funders
27th July 2022 — With a worldwide survey among governmental and private research funders, the funders' forum EViR (Ensuring Value in Research) aims to clarify whether the ten guiding principles developed for clinical trials are also suitable for the funding of preclinical research, or whether specific adaptations are needed here. The survey is also intended to contribute to a better understanding of the importance of methodological quality requirements for preclinical research for health research as a whole.
Governmental and private research funding agencies from around the world founded EViR (Ensuring Value in Research) Funders' Forum in 2017. The aim is to strengthen the quality of research by developing new procedures and practices. DLR Projektträger has been a full EViR member since 2022.
DLR Projektträger contributes its expertise to the funding of preclinical research
The questions were developed by the Preclinical Research Working Group of EViR. Its members also include DLR Projektträger, represented by Dr Marianne Kordel-Bödigheimer, head of the Evaluation Coordination Group in the field of health, and her colleagues Dr Elise Radtke and Dr Beatrix Schumak. Biologist Kordel-Bödigheimer has built up expertise in research methodology and quality standards in preclinical research over many years. For example, the expert from DLR Projektträger supported the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in drafting the call for funding preclinical confirmatory studies, which was published for the first time in 2018, and is overseeing its implementation.
According to the ten guiding principles of EViR, a research project should meet the following requirements: relevance and demonstrated need, high quality and maximum objectivity, open and transparent research and promotion. Guidelines
Raising awareness of the importance of preclinical research
Research funding institutions such as the BMBF – supported by DLR Projektträger – can make a significant contribution to quality in health research when applying the EViR guiding principles in the design of funding measures and the choice of selection criteria. In clinical research, many improvements have been implemented in recent years, for example for clinical trials with patients. There are also promising approaches by committed researchers to improve the quality of preclinical research. These could be integrated even more strongly into funding and research practice. "For this to succeed, researchers and funders must become even more aware of how important top-class preclinical research is for the quality of the clinical research that follows" explains Kordel-Bödigheimer. In the course of developing the survey, she observed: "EViR members who fund clinical and preclinical studies and scientists who are deeply involved in transferring research results from preclinical to clinical application see this connection very clearly."
Findings from basic research are taken up in preclinical research in order to investigate the biological correlations of the development and course of certain diseases and to derive therapy options from this. For this purpose, work is done with model systems in the laboratory. Patients are included in the subsequent patient-related clinical research.