When I looked into this, more than 15 years ago, I thought the difficult portion wasn't sharing the recipe, but the ingredients, if you will - granted I was in a molecular biology lab. Effectively the Material Transfer Agreements between Universities all trying to protect their IP made working with each other unbelievably inefficient.

You'd have no idea if you were going down a well trodden path which would yield no success because you have no idea it was well trod. No one publishes negative results, etc.