One point of contention is whether validation should be considered «pass / fail,» or whether it should yield a ranking to
score different antibodies as better or worse than others for the same target and application.
The overall
score encompass several factors: reproducibility of the
antibody staining in
different cell lines (and if signal strength correlates with RNA expression levels); assays for enhanced
antibody validation by using
antibodies binding to
different epitopes on the same target protein (independent
antibodies), by knockdown / knockout of the target protein (genetic methods) and by matching of the signal with a GFP - tagged protein (recombinant expression); experimental evidence for location described in literature.