The rational use of animals in drug development: contribution of the innovative medicines initiative.

Animal models are still widely used to assess the efficacy or safety of new pharmaceutical products. Since their limitations in predicting actions of drugs in humans are becoming more and more apparent, there is an urgent need to revisit the use of animals in pharmaceutical research. Herein, we review how the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), the largest public-private partnership in the life sciences, is reducing, refining and replacing the use of animals in the context of its global mission, namely, to boost research and the development of new medicines across the European Union.

Aptamer-based multiplexed proteomic technology for biomarker discovery.

Background: The interrogation of proteomes ("proteomics") in a highly multiplexed and efficient manner remains a coveted and challenging goal in biology and medicine.

Methodology/principal Findings: We present a new aptamer-based proteomic technology for biomarker discovery capable of simultaneously measuring thousands of proteins from small sample volumes (15 µL of serum or plasma). Our current assay measures 813 proteins with low limits of detection (1 pM median), 7 logs of overall dynamic range (~100 fM-1 µM), and 5% median coefficient of variation.