Networking platform for users of antibodies in biomedical research

12 July 2010

BioHub-Online.org is a web-based platform that lists over 100,000 antibody products for biomedical research and facilitates global networking and collaboration among research scientists.

Antibodies are biomedical research reagents used for hundreds of thousands of experiments globally. The global market for research antibodies exceeds $2 billion, yet independent studies show that less than 50% of commercial antibodies are of adequate quality, leading to compromised results and wasted time and resources. 

 BioHub-Online.org was developed to respond to this problem, by allowing scientists to make informed decisions and increase the efficiency of biomedical research.

Motivated to advocate product excellence and transparency within the biomedical marketplace, Alex Hodgson, co-founder of BioHub remarked, "We as a community need to support those companies who go that extra mile to bring us top-quality products and hold those that don't accountable."

BioHub-Online.org has already won the support of leading researchers, including Dr. Aled Edwards (Structural Genomics Consortium), Dr. Sachdev Sidhu (University of Toronto), Dr. Brian Marsden (University of Oxford) and Dr. Lori Frappier (Canada Research Chair in Virology). "Antibodies are among the most commonly used reagents in biomedicine, yet are subjected to the least effective quality control. BioHub will create order from this chaos by empowering the scientific community to communicate their reviews of commercial products," says Dr. Aled Edwards.

BioHub promises to not only create a channel of direct feedback between scientists and antibody providers, but also creates opportunities for users to connect with each other. Two of BioHub's community features include: BioAlerts, which lets users know when new antibodies and data have been uploaded for specific targets, while BioMessenger enables users to send direct messages to other users to facilitate follow-on collaborations.