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Article History

Received: 16 June 2020

Accepted: 18 April 2023

First Online: 4 May 2023

Competing interests

: M.W.G., O.S.S., and J.L.Z. are co-inventors on a patent filed and granted in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (Patent number: US10925975B2) on the application of acidic nanoparticles as a treatment for lysosomal acidity compromised diseases. O.S.S. and M.W.G. are co-founders of Enspire Bio/Capacity Bio, which are testing the application of these acidic nanoparticles. The remaining authors declare no other competing interests.

: The experiments and the manuscript writing were performed at four different sites: Boston University (United States of America), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), University of California, Los Angeles (United States of America), and Shenzhen Middle School (China). We carefully considered researcher contributions and authorship (as well as inventorship) criteria in this multi-region collaboration to promote greater equity in research collaborations by: (1) ensuring researchers were involved throughout the research process—study design, study implementation, and data ownership; (2) determining inventorship in accordance with patent law, with support and assistance from the technology transfer offices of the universities; (3) assessing the relevancy of the research locality; (4) discussing and agreeing on the roles and responsibilities amongst the collaborators; and (5) determining if the research would be restricted, require local ethics review, local animal welfare review, environmental protection, and/or bio risk-related regulations in the setting of the researcher.