“Experimental” institutional models for corporate funding of academic research: Unknown effects on the research enterprise

Abstract

Corporate funding for academic research has been increasing across all fields of clinical medicine and science [ [1] Krimsky S. Science in the private interest. Rowan & Littlefield, Lanham, MD2003 Google Scholar ]. Formal, explicitly defined institutional relationships between an academic unit (e.g., department, center, organized research unit) and a corporate research sponsor range from corporate sponsorship of the entire academic unit to a ban on corporate funding. Academic units that allow individual faculty to receive corporate research sponsorship, but have no formal relationships with a sponsor at the level of the unit can be considered “traditional” departments. Examples of formal institutional relationships between universities and corporate funders include: •Corporate funded department (e.g., Novartis funding of University of California Berkeley Department of Plant and Microbial Biology)[ [2] Macilwain C. Berkeley teams up with Novartis in $50m plant genomics deal. Nature. 1998; 396: 5 Crossref PubMed Scopus (4) Google Scholar ] •Corporate funded academic research center (e.g., Harvard Center for Risk Analysis) •Research center with a mix of corporate funding and government funding (e.g., California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research [QB3]). The California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3) is a cooperative effort between the state of California, the University of California campuses at Berkeley, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz, and industry and venture capital partners (http://www.qb3.org/partners.htm). •Funding mechanisms that require collaboration with industry (e.g., The Office of Technology administers the Small Business Innovation Research [SBIR] Program and the Small Business Technology Transfer [STTR] Program.) •University-based start-up companies (e.g., nonpublicly traded companies focused on developing a few products) •Total bans on acceptance of research funding (e.g., Harvard University School of Public Health tobacco industry funding ban)