Corporate Research: Best Labs Combine Virtues Of Both Academia And Industry

Commercial productivity is the payoff when firms provide scientists with a comfortably collegiate professional environment Recognizing the successful tradition of the university science environment, industry research directors are carrying over the academic spirit in their efforts toward building harmonious and productive labs. Their aim is to preserve the pursuit of pure discovery and the free exchange of ideas, while at the same time moving assertively toward the achievement of commercial goals. In the biotechnology industry sector, this strategy--geared to, among other things, making their companies more inviting to talented young scientists--has paid off impressively for several firms. "We've seen that we're competing with academic institutions for the kinds of scientists that we have," says Daniel Vapnek, senior vice president for research at Amgen Inc., Thousand Oaks, Calif. "And it turns out that the kind of environment that we maintain is, in a lot of ways, like an academic environment." Says Doug Williams, vice president and director of biological sciences for Immunex Corp., Seattle: "We have kept our good young investigators happy by enabling them to publish their findings and go to scientific meetings and be recognized by the scientific community at large, as opposed to just being recognized within the organization. "That, I think, has helped us keep some of our very good people." However, misgivings a researcher might have about being asked to keep results secret from scientific colleagues at other companies, for example, or to focus only on profit-motivated studies, do spring, after all, from the real world of industry research: Companies have to protect their valuable intellectual property--and the bottom line must be respected in any business. At one biotech firm, Scios Nova in Mountain View, Calif., vice president and director of research John Lewicki says that his company tries to support its scientists in every way, including encouraging them to publish the results of their investigations. "But, most important, above all " he says, "is protecting the company's trade secrets. I wouldn't want to give the impression that we rush out and publish everything, because we're far from that. We're actually rigorous in scrutinizing things." In this respect, however, the academic and industry research realms have become more alike than they once were. Increasingly, university scientists are careful to protect potentially valuable research findings; thus, the need for secrecy is no longer a distinguishing trait of private enterprise. 2 Genetics Institute 553 20,759 37.54 3 Biogen Inc. 568 20,258 35.67 4 Chiron Corp. 1,691 55,493 32.82 5 Centocor Inc. 243 6,787 27.93 6 Immunex Corp. 541 14,858 27.46 7 Cambridge Biotech 140 3,660 26.14 8 Scios Nova 553 10,190 19.12 9 Amgen Inc. 570 9,983 17.51 10 Genzyme Corp. 77 831 10.79 Source: Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia Given these developments over recent years, the question of comparative scientific productivity remains. And by at least one measure--the average number of citations per research paper published--some biotechnology companies are, in fact, achieving success comparable to that of the best academic labs. In a recent study--conducted by the Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia--of 35 leading independent, academic, and industry institutions, four of the top 10 biotech companies (see table on page 7) by citation impact also rank among the top 10 research producers overall, sharing honors with such distinguished research centers as the Whitehead Institute, Cambridge, Mass., and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Long Island, N.Y. Research in industry resembles that in academia more and more, as research directors seeking to compete with the universities for the top talent strive to create lab cultures more like those the scientists are familiar with in the academic world. As differences disappear, the flow of scientists between the two environments has picked up, and the satisfactions and accomplishments of researchers in for-profit settings has risen. "In the 1960s or earlier, for an academic to go to a pharmaceutical firm was virtually the end of their academic career," says Hugh Niall, vice president of research discovery at Genentech Inc., South San Francisco, Calif., "because they disappeared into a black box and were never heard from again. And that has changed dramatically in recent years, leading to the situation where people do move back and forth quite a bit." Laboratories in biotechnology companies are, in many ways, consciously modeled on the academic labs that originally spawned the industry, research directors say. The drive to answer fundamental biological questions remains strong among biotech researchers, and collegial interactions with the larger scientific community--through publications, collaborations with university-based scientists, and attendance at meetings--are important to sustaining that drive, they say. Being able to keep scientists' motivation and satisfaction levels high translates into high lab productivity, say the directors, and so the biotechs work hard to support research environments in which both investigator curiosity and the free exchange of information are nurtured. Young investigators, many at the postdoctoral level or just past, are often given a good deal of latitude to develop their interests and talents, and working research alliances with academic scientists are encouraged. In several companies, individual scientists are given considerable freedom to choose the projects they work on, as a way to ensure that their commitment to their work remains high--even to the point that different project leaders within a company may compete to woo the best researchers into their labs. "When scientists are recruited here, they really have a choice of the areas they're going to work in," says Vapnek. "Often, a research scientist makes the decision about which group he or she wants to join, so that they're interested in the research that's going on in that group. We tend not to assign scientists to specific projects." "The scientists have a great deal of leeway in terms of what they work on," says Niall. "So, with a large project, what one can end up with is a rather informal project team, where groups of scientists from several departments are involved." But research heads say that doing science in a for-profit setting does present some important differences from university-based investigation. Companies have a clear self-interest in protecting their intellectual property, and this dictates restraint in publishing, for instance. And not every idea can be pursued in a company lab, whatever its scientific worth, unless its contribution to the company's ultimate goals can first be demonstrated. For the most part, of course, this means developing a drug or other marketable product. "We do try to discourage scientists from working on projects that, although they may be scientifically interesting, would not add measurably to the company if they were successful," says Vapnek. Far from hurting the level of science in their companies, however, this need to create effective, marketable diagnostic and therapeutic products gives the work a sharp focus, biotech research captains say. This focus often serves to advance the discovery component of the science practiced in their labs, they say. "We will not work on programs [without] clear-cut commercial objectives, and commercial objectives that we think are readily achievable," says Lewicki. "But there have to be both applied and basic components to that science. You can't pursue [commercial goals] solely from an applied standpoint, because in any given project there are too many things we don't understand." "It turns out not to be all that difficult to excite scientists about targeted goals," says Niall. "It's really, in a way, the Bell Labs philosophy." Research at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J., where staffers have won five Nobel Prizes, has long served as the model for top-quality scientific investigations in a private setting. "After a while, people realize that they can do just as innovative work--the aim of which is to develop a new drug--as they could when the aim is to publish a paper," Niall says. While the company's goals may be products, for many scientists it remains important that they be free to publish their research findings--or, at least, the majority of them. For better or worse, publication is central to the process of science and to building a reputation in one's field of interest. Scientific managers in the biotechs understand that their scientists need to have the opportunity to publish their results. But they also know that ideas themselves are the most valuable products resulting from their efforts and that those ideas need to be protected from appropriation. Most have some kind of internal review process prior to allowing publication, usually including filing preliminary patent applications. But differences in degree of openness toward research publication do emerge among companies. "We do worry about [publishing proprietary information]," says Jim Rasmussen, senior vice president of research at Genzyme Corp., Boston. "There's a peer review within the scientific group, a review by our legal department for proprietary purposes, and a review by somebody from corporate development, usually the project leader. And everybody's got to sign off before the paper can be submitted." "Publishing and presenting at meetings and having a presence in the scientific community in general is an important motivating factor for the company's scientists," says Scios Nova's Lewicki. "And, often, these `proprietary secrets' are really not secrets. You have a lot of other laboratories working in the same areas. They're bright people, and proprietary information you might possess is unlikely to be proprietary for long." Rather than try to keep the company science secret, Lewicki says, they strive instead to persistently advance their research, to maintain their competitive edge through constant progress. "We do what we can to make sure that our intellectual property rights are protected," says Williams at Immunex. "But we also have to recognize that for the people who are making those contributions, the ability to get out there and talk about them and publish on the work is also important. We're walking a fine line, to be sure." "We publish between 95 and 99 percent of the work that's done here that's worth publishing," says Genentech's Niall. "We file a patent before the paper is published to protect the company and preserve the intellectual property of Genentech. "But that can be done very quickly, on the basis of a draft of the publication being circulated among the authors. Our patent attorneys can normally turn that into a patent application within a week or two, which really doesn't hold up a publication at all." Vapnek points out that academia, too, has become more aware of patentable findings than ever before. The biotechs are not the only ones seeking to protect their intellectual property, he says. "People in the universities now realize the potential value of certain things," Vapnek says, "and, very often, will look at the possibility of patenting before publications are done. But we do want our scientists to participate in the academic community, and to do that you have to encourage publication." "The question of secrecy," says Niall, "is not, in fact, all that different from what it is in academia, where there are scientists who will jealously guard their results until they're ready to publish." When very specific skills are needed or an entirely new program is to be launched, older scientists with existing records of achievement will be sought and recruited, say the research heads. But, for the majority of their new hires, the top biotechs look instead to bring in the best young researchers they can attract, generally at the postdoctoral level. They then try to provide an environment for these young scientists that they hope will bring out the best efforts of the new researchers over time. Genentech, for example, sponsors between 50 and 60 postdocs for two- or three-year appointments. Nearly one in five of the company's researchers is a postdoc. The proj-ects given to these postdocs often fall into the category of curiosity-based research, says Niall. In its attention to developing the talents of younger scientists, the program helps further the effort to create an academic-like atmosphere. "The understanding is that the postdoc needs to be given a project that is publishable," says Niall. "And for the supervisor of that postdoc, this is an opportunity for them to have something going on in their lab which is exploratory." Niall says a few of the postdocs will be asked to stay on after their appointments. "It does provide an opportunity to identify some really outstanding young scientists," he says, "although most of the postdocs will go on, as they almost always do, to careers in academia or here in industry." Other biotechs also rely on hiring, and then developing in-house, younger scientists to meet their research goals. "The majority of the scientists that we've hired have been ones who have completed postdoctoral work, are now looking at their first position, and are deciding whether to go to a company or a university," says Amgen's Vapnek. "I've tended to bring in people who are just coming out of a postdoc and tried to develop them over the years," says Williams of Immunex. "We try to promote people within the organization," says Genzyme's Rasmussen, "so, unless it's a major new program, the typical hire we'd like to make is a really good young researcher coming off of a postdoc." One result of the effort the biotechs have made to create an academic-style atmosphere is that researchers are more comfortable moving between industry and the university than ever before. This means that companies occasionally lose researchers, often among their more valued scientists, to tenure-track jobs in academia. But the ease of movement between the two worlds also means that recruiting from the universities has become easier for the biotechs than it was, say, for the pharmaceutical companies in decades past. "The other side of the coin in trying to create an academic atmosphere," says Genentech's Niall, "is that, almost automatically, it creates a situation where people feel comfortable moving back and forth [between industry and academia]. And I would argue that that's a tradeoff that's a very reasonable one to make, because we can point to the fact that they've gone to very senior jobs in academia, as many of20them have. And that really helps us recruit new people in."

Corporate Research: Best Labs Combine Virtues Of Both Academia And Industry

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