The Globe reports today that Pfizer is going to set up a small drug development shop in collaboration with basically every teaching hospital on Boston.
As the story points out, universities often complain that they don’t have the resources to turn promising discoveries into potential products. It’s the same argument NIH made in January when announcing the creation of a new drug discovery lab.
The problem is that the development process involves risk. A potential product can fail any where along the way and all the money spent on salaries and labs goes to waste. Which is one reason drug companies charge so much for meds. You’re not just paying for the drugs that work out – you’re paying for the drugs that fail.
Now you may get to pay twice. Practically all of the research done in the region’s teaching hospitals is funded by NIH. When Mass General and Pfizer come up with their big blockbusters, will the feds get a share of the royalties? It hasn’t really worked out that way in the past.
From the Globe:
Under the new model, a joint steering committee consisting of three people from Pfizer and three people from a scientific research institution will decide which proposals will move forward as research projects…
“We’ve been wrestling with this issue for a couple of years,‘’ said Mark Chalek, director of technology ventures at Beth Israel Deaconess. "It’s not as if we can do drug discovery and drug development — to some extent, [the deal with] Pfizer contains many of the elements we thought we would have to create on our own.’’
The new partnership comes as connections between industry and academia are being increasingly scrutinized because of concerns that financial ties could bias the practice of medicine. Many medical schools and academic medical centers have recently adopted stricter rules governing those relationships.
Nature News offers another story on universities partnerships. Schools used to get away with just naming buildings after donors. Now, donations come with caveats. Tufts’ Sheldon Krimsky writes about how Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee is allowing the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation to make hiring decisions as part of a $1.5 million donation to the school. (Charles is the brother of David, who donated $100 million for MIT’s cancer research effort, now housed in a new buidling in Kendall Square. Donors at MIT do not have any say in faculty appointments, according to an MIT spokesman )
The university agreed to give the foundation the authority to decide the selection criteria used to fill the economics faculty positions that it paid for, and the right to veto candidates of whom it did not approve…The university insists that it was aware of the threat to its independence, and was prepared to pull out of the agreement if it felt that its integrity was being undermined by outside influence. It says that the two academics subsequently appointed and funded under the agreement were its choices. Yet it accepts that the contract presents the appearance of outside influence, and says it is now reviewing its decision to sign it.