Is the Relationship Between Academic Biomedical Researchers and Bioscience Companies Getting Too Cozy?

The 1990's saw a dramatic increase in collaboration between leading bioscience research universities and biotech companies both in the United States and abroad. The reason for this collaboration was clear: to attract new capital into biotech research and spur the growth of existing and new biotech companies and products. Yes, bioscience is clearly an industry of the future. A large number of metro areas and states are hanging their economic hats on the industry. According to a recent Brookings Institute study on biotech in the U.S., 51 metro areas lay claim to being "biotech meccas." The Brookings study finds, however, that 9 metros control 3/4 of the nation's largest biotech companies and they accounted for 3/4 of all new biotech startups in the past decade.

Could there be a fly in the ointment here somewhere? Ready for this? A recent article published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) finds that approximately one-fourth of biomedical (bioscience and biotech) scientists have financial affiliations with industry, according to a new review of studies about academic conflicts of interest. The review, conducted by researchers at Yale University School of Medicine and published yesterday in JAMA, also concludes that two-thirds of academic institutions hold equity in start-up companies that sponsor research performed at those institutions, and that research financed by industry is more likely to draw commercially favorable conclusions. Not good news for metro areas like Boston, New York, Raleigh-Durham, Baltimore/Washington D.C., San Diego, St. Louis, Cleveland and a raft of others that are counting on the biosciences to propel their future economies.

"Financial relationships are pervasive and problematic," wrote Justin E. Bekelman, Yan Li, and Cary P. Gross, who are researchers in the medicine and biostatistics departments at Yale. They reviewed the medical literature, looking for studies that analyzed financial relationships between academe and industry.

The researchers found that not only did industrial sponsorship affect the outcome of the studies, but that it also tended to affect the design of clinical trials. For instance, industrially sponsored studies were more likely to compare new pharmaceuticals to placebos than to currently used medicines, a technique that increases the likelihood of a positive outcome.

Mr. Krimsky, one of the researchers, said that bias due to industrial funds is more extensive than is generally believed. The Yale researchers found that not only did studies financed by the tobacco industry report pro-industry results, but that studies on pharmaceuticals were affected by their source of funds, as well.

What's the answer? The researchers propose that to manage conflicts of interest, universal policies should be adopted by academic institutions and by journals. They recommend the creation of a public database that would include the results of all clinical trials as well as disclose investigators' financial ties to industry.

But Mr. Krimsky thinks that disclosure may not be enough: "We would not permit a judge, for example, to have equity in a for-profit prison, even if the judge disclosed it. And yet it seems to be that it's OK for scientists to have equity in companies that fund their research as long as they disclose it."

Want to know more? Click here to go to the JAMA website. As they say, maybe you don't want to go there.

Several questions come to mind in taking all this in. First, are academic researchers "cooking" their results to support commercialization of products that are potentially harmful to the public? Second, will this study create roadblocks in building future university-industry partnerships in the biosciences? Third, are the study results valid?

This is an issue that we need more information about, and it is one that local and state economic developers need to pay some attention to. We will continue to monitor the issue.