PAASP was founded in November 2015 to provide services related to rigor in nonregulated biomedical research – with a mission to improve the probability of translating preclinical discoveries into safe and effective medications.

PAASP was the first to start offering this service to academic and industry, public and private funders. And, we believe, PAASP may still be the only organization providing a full range of services from good research practice training for young scientists to due diligence support for investors.

Over the years we were involved in a great number of projects and discussions with various types of colleagues and customers. The diversity of our activities was not due to our inability to focus but rather because we often encountered reluctance, hesitance, pushback and sometimes sheer opposition to engage in pursuing good or better research practices. Many organizations were inclined to allocate neither time, capacity nor resources to pursue good and better research practices. Although the necessity was felt and agreed to, procrastination was often the response. Nearly every biomedical research stakeholder has pressing timelines and numerous bureaucratic obligations to fulfil, is stressed to deliver (typically, positive data J), and is concerned more about today rather than tomorrow.

We are not the only ones making such observations, and it has already extensively been discussed and explained why, for example, almost all universally agreed recommendations do not translate or translate very slowly into practice.

Why? 

We identified several roadblocks and our strategy to overcome these challenges has three key pillars:

• Change the perception of quality being potentially harmful and educate how one can reward scientists for following the desired path of continuous improvement;
• Provide young generation of scientists with the knowledge why one home run tomorrow is better than two doubles today;
• Focus on organizations that invest in research not (only) to get a good return on this investment but because they care about its consequences, whether it is the number of market authorizations obtained or the amount or type of resources wasted.