Internal Strains Block Joint Biotech Research

WASHINGTON--Don’t add biomedical companies to the short list of U.S. industries that have agreed to form national research consortia to compete in world markets. The strain of mixing scientific cooperation with financial competition ap- pears to be too great. Although drug companies have yet to form a consortium to do basic research in biotechnology, their scientists can watch how one variant of the concept is playing in Peoria. Seven companies with interests in agricultural biotechnology have founded the Biotechnology Research and Development Corp. (BRDC) in Peoria, Ill. The effort was launched by the Agricultural Research and Development Corp. (ARDC) a joint venture of Cilcorp Ventures and the Economic Development Council for the Peoria area to revive a sagging economy. The consortium's scientific advisory board is now screening proposals for work to be carried out at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Northern Regionul Research Center in Peoria and the University of Illinois’ biotechnology center in Urbana. The first projects are expected to start this summer, with funding from state and federal governments and the member companies—American Cyanamid, Amoco Technology, Dow Chemical, Ecogen, Hewlett-Packard, International Minerals & Chemical and ARDC. "The idea is to move government research into the private sector so people can benefit," said Timothy Mounts, a research director at the federal lab. He said the member companies are interested in taking advantage of the laws expertise in mass-production fermentation biochemistry as well as microbial processes. "In leveraging my $200,000 against that of other companies and money from Illinois and the federal government. I’m involved in $5 million of research," said James Granilich, who directs the agricultural research division at American Cyanamid in Princeton, N.J. "We’re leveraging lots of peoples minds and money, and spreading the risks around." The Technology Transfer Act of 1986 permits private companies to obtain ownership and patent rights to research in federal labs. All BRDC members have an equal right to use the results of any research funded under the program. The initial work will be done by federal and university scientists, but Gramlich said he expects industry researchers to play a growing role. With plenty of marketable ideas to go around, he said, he doesn’t mind "being a little bit of a pioneer." Stephen Greene Last spring molecular biologists C. Fred Fox of UCLA and Dale Oxender of the University of Michigan invited two dozen companies to a meeting exploring the idea of a consortium to conduct generic research in biotechnology. Although the participants at the Keystone, Cob., conference agreed that collaboration was a good idea, they were not prepared to tackle the problems that stand in the way of a successful cooperative effort. "There’s an accumulation of detailed reasons at the nitty-gritty level that present quite a formidable barrier," observed Ronald Cape, chairman of Cetus Corp. Added Fox, "the companies could not identify end points they felt were worthwhile as goals for joint pursuit." Few scientists dispute the potential benefits of such collaboration. "Indeed, the concept of a consortium to address pre-competitive research is essential and must occur," declared George Poste, who directs R&D at SmithKline Beckman. "The problem of technological self-sufficiency will be an issue of ever-increasing importance as we enter the era of big biology, where the size of the hammer required to crack a particular nut becomes bigger than the resources of even the biggest companies." The next nuts to crack include sequencing the human genome and several fundamental problems in protein engineering and genetic research. And although at least one agricultural biotech consortium has been formed to exploit technology transferred from a federal lab (see accompanying story), scientists who have considered collaborative industrial research point to several major obstacles, including corporate concern over patent rights, proprietary control and antitrust regulations. They also cite the lack of agreement on appropriate research topics, and the point at which such research should become proprietary. Inspired in part by Japan’s collaborative research projects in such areas as protein engineering, fermentation and large cale animal cell culture, Fox and Oxender hoped to stimulate interest among U.S. industrial scientists for similar joint endeavors. "We lack an effective mechanism for getting researchers in academia and industry together," Fox said. "Are we squandering resources through senseless competition? Why should we be doing the same damn thing at 10 universities?" "Although the reasons behind the work being done in industry and academia may be different," he said, "who cares what the motivation is if the end point is useful? The whole thing is to develop a worthwhile set of community agendas to which people can subscribe." That goal proved unattainable last year. "A small number of potential subjects [for collaboration] were identified," Cape said, "but when push came to shove, they couldn’t sell the ideal to a sufficient number of companies. The idea hasn't died. Fox said he still promotes it through the UCLA Symposium program, which he directs. And this summer the board of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association will review a position paper on the issue from its biotechnology advisory committee. According to committee chairman Ralph Christoffersen, vice president for discovery research at Upjohn, "some major scientific roadblocks” are delaying the development of promising therapeutic products. It’s easier to recognize the difficulties from the research bench than from the boardroom," he said. "Most research-based firms," he added, "believe that what gives them their niche is their ability to do the research themselves." Christoffersen said, "the collaborative approach is very important for the long-term competitiveness of the pharmaceutical business. But the timing is not quite right” because of the lack of good models for such industrial collaboration." The models that do exist—MCC in the computer industry and the newly created Sematech in semi-conductors, both in Austin, Texas, are not wholly relevant because of differences in the science and structure of those industries, according to Cape, Poste and Christoffersen. And foreign models, such as Japan’s Protein Engineering Research Institute at Osaka, reflect a different cultural background and are not easily duplicated. "A lot of the proposals involve some basic social engineering in our culture,"said Cape. "That’s taking on a lot." Noting that U.S. computer and semiconductor companies agreed to collaborate only in the face of intense competition from abroad, Oxender said, he expects the U.S. biotech industry to close ranks when it feels more threatened than it does today. "It’s only a matter of time," he declared. Greene is on the staff of THE SCIENTIST.

Internal Strains Block Joint Biotech Research

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