The dream of producing medically relevant scientific observations, which are then translated successfully into therapeutic modalities, is the driving force behind much laboratory research. Such noble aspirations have, however, been soured by an underlying stand-off between basic researchers and clinicians. Attitudes that have been engendered by an ‘excessive faith in the validity of animal disease models’ on the one hand, versus ‘mechanistic over-interpretation of studies based on patient-derived samples’ on the other hand, have served to widen the gulf between the two camps.