Reducing sources of variance in experimental procedures in in vitro research

Background: Lack of reproducibility in preclinical research poses ethical and economic challenges for biomedical science. Various institutional activities by society stakeholders of leading industrialised nations are currently underway with the aim of improving the situation. Such initiatives are usually concerned with high-level organisational issues and typically do not focus on improving experimental approaches per se. Addressing these is necessary in order to increase consistency and success rates of lab-to-lab repetitions. Methods: In this project, we statistically evaluated repetitive data of a very basic and widely applied lab procedure, namely quantifying the number of viable cells. The purpose of this was to assess the impact of different parameters and instrumentations which may constitute sources of variance in this procedure. Conclusion: By comparing the variability of data acquired under two different procedures, featuring improved stringency of protocol adherence, our project attempts to identify the sources and propose guidelines on how to reduce such fluctuations. We believe our work can contribute to tackling the repeatability crisis in biomedical research.