Movember Funding to Date
USD 110,160
What we seek to achieve
To replicate key experimental results from high impact papers published in the prostate cancer field, in order to validate important scientific findings and identify robust results that can be built upon to faster identify high-impact biomedical research findings that could lead to earlier detection and new cures for men with prostate cancer.
- Country
- United States
- Implemented by
- Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF)
- Project start date
- October 2014
- Project Status
- Completed July 2016
About the project
PCF has partnered with Science Exchange, a marketplace for scientific collaboration, to faster identify high-impact biomedical research findings that could speed earlier detection and new cures.
To select papers for replication, the Scopus citation database was searched with the following query: TITLE-ABS-KEY(“prostate cancer” OR “prostate onco*” OR “prostate tumor*” OR “prostate metasta*” OR “prostate neoplas*” OR “prostate malignan*” OR “prostate carcino*”) AND DOCTYPE(ar) AND PUBYEAR = 2013 AND NOT (INDEXTERMS("clinical trial")) AND (LIMIT-TO(LANGUAGE,"English"))
The top 100 most cited papers from the query were exported and the query was repeated for 2014. Papers were then ranked from highest to lowest citations for each year. Clinical trials, case studies and reviews were excluded, as well as studies that only reported sequencing of cancer samples (mainly TCGA studies), and studies that were not explicitly about prostate cancer. The top 10 most highly cited prostate cancer papers published in 2013 and 2014 were then selected to form the 20 studies chosen for initial consideration. Three studies from the initial list of 20 were chosen for validation by independent replication of the key experimental results. Due to funding constraints, two of the studies went through complete validation.
The two studies were as follows:
Sharma et al./LncRNA-dependent mechanisms of androgen-receptor-regulated gene activation programs/2013/Replication by Noble Life Sciences
Thadani-Mulero M. et al/Androgen receptor splice variants determine taxane sensitivity in prostate cancer/2014/Replication by U Penn and ProNovus
The Prostate Cancer Foundation-Movember Foundation Reproducibility Initiative is managed by a core team of personnel who develop and execute the project design. This includes coordinating and participating in the coding of information from the original papers, and communicating with the original authors and Science Exchange providers who will be performing the replication experiments.
Replication studies will be conducted as follows, based on the replication protocol used by the Cancer Biology Reproducibility Project:
- Scientists at Science Exchange will choose a subset of key experiments to be replicated for each study.
- Each replication study will be assigned a Science Exchange project manager who will write up detailed experimental protocols for the proposed replication experiments, noting any areas requiring additional details or clarification.
- Science Exchange project managers will notify the original study authors that a replication of their work is being conducted, and will ask the authors for any necessary protocol details, raw data, or shared reagents.
- Original study authors will be asked to review and suggest modifications to the proposed experimental protocols.
- Power calculations will be conducted to confirm appropriate samples sizes for the replications (a minimum power of 80% to detect the originally reported effect will be used). Additional statistical analysis of original data will be conducted if a more rigorous and/or correct data analysis method is necessary.
- Replication experiments will be assigned to Science Exchange labs based on area of expertise. These experts will provide any missing protocol details. Chosen labs will sign nondisclosure agreements (if not already in place) with Science Exchange, preventing dissemination of any aspects of the replication studies throughout the project timeline.
- Proposed replication experimental protocols will be peer reviewed by a panel of expert reviewers through the open-access journal PeerJ, using the Registered Reports format .
- Replication experiments will be conducted and analyzed by the assigned Science Exchange labs according to the peer reviewed replication protocols. Payment will be made to Science Exchange labs by Science Exchange upon completion of agreed upon project milestones.
- Upon experimental completion, the full methods, raw data and figures will be provided in a report by the Science Exchange labs to the Science Exchange project manager. These reports will be shared with the Prostate Cancer Foundation for review and analysis.
- Reproducibility of the findings will be determined through objective quantitative and statistical analysis. A meta-analysis combining the original and replication data will be conducted to determine the effect size of the experiment based on all available data.
- Replication studies will be sent to PCF for review and analysis. Upon agreement with PCF, the data and results for each study will be sent to editors for publication at PeerJ.
- Upon publication, replication data and results will be deposited in public repositories through the Open Science Framework (OSF) infrastructure.
- Project goals, procedures, findings and implications will be disseminated by the PCF.
