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Mission and background

CAMARADES Berlin is a facility to promote the benefits of systematic review and meta-analysis of animal studies, and provides methodological support for Charité researchers to perform robust, high quality reviews. CAMARADES Berlin is located at the BIH QUEST Center for Responsible Research.
Systematic reviews provide an overview of a research field and highlight knowledge gaps to help justify new studies, while decreasing the likelihood that unnecessary research is conducted. Empirical evidence from systematic reviews can directly inform 3Rs-related experimentation decisions, from housing and husbandry to sample size calculations, modelling, and outcome testing.
Systematic reviews have helped to define factors contributing to our failure to translate findings from animal models to clinical benefit, including threats to the internal and external validity of animal studies. Through targeted improvement measures, we can reduce the use of animals in research of low scientific value and increase reproducibility and translation.
This facility will position the Charité to lead the application of this methodology to address the 3Rs and provide an evidence base for robust animal experiments across Germany.