The ECNP Preclinical Network has announced the winner of the Award for the best publication of negative results in preclinical neuroscience. The Award was presented by Dr. Patricia Kabitzke (Cohen Veterans Bioscience, the main sponsor of the Award) during the ECNP Congress in Barcelona on October 7, 2018 to Prof. Tom Beckers (KU Leuven, Belgium) for the following paper:
Luyten L, Beckers T (2017) A preregistered, direct replication attempt of the retrieval-extinction effect in cued fear conditioning in rats. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory 144: 208–215.

Since it was established in 2014, one of the core goals of the ECNP Network Preclinical Data Forum is to facilitate sharing of unpublished information between scientists (in particular from industrial companies where a lot of obstacles exist). With this goal in mind, the evaluation committee has decided to award a Special Distinction to the paper written in collaboration by scientists from three pharma companies:
Latta-Mahieu M, Elmer B, Bretteville A, et al (2018) Systemic immune-checkpoint blockade with anti-PD1 antibodies does not alter cerebral amyloid-β burden in several amyloid transgenic mouse models. Glia. 2018 Mar;66(3):492-504.

Overall, this was a successful project and there is an ongoing discussion with the sponsor (Cohen Veterans Bioscience) about repeating the competition. Further, the experience generated during this project (most importantly, what makes a negative study worth sharing) will be summarized and published soon.

From left to right: Laurent Pradier (Sanofi), Patricia Kabitzke (Cohen Veterans Bioscience), Tom Beckers (KU Leuven), Thomas Steckler (ECNP Preclinical Data Forum co-chair, Janssen) and Anton Bespalov (ECNP Preclinical Data Forum co-chair, PAASP).