Responsible use of negative research outcomes—accelerating the discovery and development of new antibiotics

Failure to share and make use of existing knowledge, particularly negative research outcomes, has been recognized as one of the key sources of waste and inefficiency in the drug discovery and development process. In the field of antibiotic research, providing a platform where negative outcomes could be shared to prevent the vicious cycle of duplicating costly studies that produce the same negative results would greatly de-risk and accelerate the development of new antibiotics. Providing a legally supported framework that recognizes negative outcomes as intellectual contributions, which can subsequently be translated into a revenue-sharing model, may lead to more openness and value creation in support of a sustainable and responsible transformation of research into socially and economically beneficial innovations.