Example — an illustrative record showing the WASTE article format. WASTE is pre-launch; this is not a published, peer-reviewed article.
Null Dataset: Unsuccessful Drug Candidates from a High-Throughput Screen Against SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease
Supplementary materials are linked from the published record.
Abstract
We release data on approximately 15,000 compounds that showed no significant inhibition (<10%) of the SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) in our high-throughput screening campaign.
Negative screening results are rarely published, which leads independent groups to repeatedly screen the same inactive chemical space. This dataset documents what did not work, with assay conditions and per-compound readouts.
The intent is purely to prevent duplicated screening effort. No claim of activity is made for any compound; this is a record of absence of activity under the stated assay.
Failure Analysis
Stage: Screening / Data
Primary causes
- Screened chemical library did not contain potent Mpro inhibitors
- Assay sensitivity bounded the minimum detectable inhibition at ~10%
Boundary conditions: Compounds inactive here may show activity against other targets or under different assay conditions; the null applies only to Mpro under the stated assay.
Lessons Learned
- Publishing inactive compounds prevents independent groups from re-screening the same chemical space.
- Per-compound readouts and assay conditions are required for a null dataset to be reusable.
- Absence of activity is a result worth recording, not a non-finding.
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