University Bargains with Students' Rights

Three years ago, the University of California, Berkeley, plant and microbial biology (PMB) department negotiated an exclusive research relationship with Novartis Agricultural Research Institute that allowed the company to review graduate student and postdoc work before publication. But the university didn't consult the students before trading away their intellectual property rights, provoking lasting anger and confusion, according to a sociologist's report commissioned by the university. Many students say that Novartis has not actually interfered with publication or slowed their work in any way. Still, ethicists say, the agreement raises questions about the inclusion of student work in agreements over corporate-academic partnerships. "It's one thing for full-bore grown-up scientists to make decisions about where they want to go [for funding], but it's another thing to say that the work of our grad students is open for exploitation by a private company," says Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "You could say, 'Well, the students that go there understand that that's part of the condition,' but I don't think they understand it at all." Few institutions include students in fundraising because of practical and cultural reasons. The PMB faculty negotiators signed confidentiality agreements. "There was essentially no choice but to limit the flow of information from the meetings held to discuss the details leading to the arrangement," says Andrew O. Jackson, the PMB department chair since 1999. "I don't really know if an alternative mechanism could be used in the future to bring the student and postdoc groups into such discussions." Despite their initial alienation, students, postdocs, and faculty say that the relationship-in addition to the $25 million added to the department's budget and access to the company's proprietary plant genome databases-has given them seed money for new projects and a short respite from grant writing, allowing them more time for teaching and hands-on lab work. Critics of the agreement say that it could hold up publications and impinge on the academic freedom of students, postdocs, and faculty, influencing the direction of research away from noncommercial, more basic questions. "In the infant stages of the agreement grad students weren't being kept up-to-date," states Keith Slotkin, a second-year graduate student studying maize genetics in the lab of Michael Freeling. "A lot of the information they were getting was by word of mouth or by E-mail. Everything was a lot of rumors and I think the grad students complained about that." Discussions are now more open, he says. "Although people agree with and generally think [the agreement] is a good thing," he adds. "There are definitely some evils that we have to watch out for." The Terms of Endearment Courtesy of Anne Maclachlan Anne MacLachlan The research contract that the PMB department signed was originally with the Novartis Agricultural Research Institute (NADI) (http://plantbio.berkeley.edu/PMB-TMRI/index.html). In early 2001, Syngenta, a company formed by Novartis and Astra Zeneca agricultural divisions, acquired NADI and renamed it the Torrey Mesa Research Institute (TMRI). In exchange for $25 million from Syngenta/TMRI (earmarked for research and overhead expenses during the five-year agreement) and access to proprietary plant genomics databases, the department allows TMRI a 30-day advance preview on all prepress publications and presentation abstracts authored by participating faculty members and their graduate students and postdocs. This includes research sponsored by state and federal money at the public institution, another bone of contention for some ethicists. Industry sponsors normally only get an advance pass at data they specifically fund. According to Carol Mimura in Berkeley's Office of Technology and Licensing, TMRI has the first right to negotiate a license up to an "allowed percentage" (about one-third) of inventions. Berkeley files and owns the patents, but the company pays all expenses associated with the patenting process. TMRI currently has rights to seven patent applications under the PMB-TMRI agreement. Four inventions arose in part from TMRI-funded projects, and three were solely funded by TMRI. Eleven inventors are postdocs, one is a graduate student, and one is an assistant researcher. Initial Concerns The commercial relationship raised so many questions and fears that Berkeley vice chancellor Carol Christ commissioned a study on its impact by Anne J. MacLachlan, a senior researcher at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at Berkeley. Based on 35 interviews with students from February to June 2000, the report concludes the "lack of clear communication from department faculty during agreement negotiations combined with the style of faculty communication with graduate students angered and alienated more than half of the students who expressed dissatisfaction with their exclusion from the process." Courtesy of Matthew Metz Matthew Metz Some PMB students also complain about the initial negotiations. "Students felt in the dark," says Matthew Metz, a postdoc at the University of Washington departments of microbiology and botany since July 2001. Metz was a PhD student in plant pathology from 1995 to mid-2001 at Brian Staskawicz's lab at PMB. Metz comments that the 30-day review period has not affected his ability to publish or give talks. He sent a manuscript from his dissertation to TMRI for review, and when he didn't hear back within 30 days, he proceeded to publication, with no further obligation to the company. Since the university is in control of the date on which a patent application is filed, the principals have an interest in quickly processing the material. Michael Axtell, a fourth-year grad student in the Staskawicz lab studying disease resistance in Arabidopsis, also reports satisfaction with the agreement. "I've already published one paper that went through the review process and it caused no problems," he says, "because we're allowed to submit the first draft of the paper. The [journal] reviewers sit on [papers] for a month or two anyway." Some faculty worried the agreement would influence even those department researchers who did not sign onto it. Lewis Feldman, a professor of plant biology, says he was "one of the last hold-outs." He finally agreed to use company funding because the contract allowed him to opt out after one year. He planned his work so that no grad student would be supported by money from the agreement for that first year. "That way, if there were any problems, which there were not, no grad student would be disadvantaged," he says. Feldman received $75,000 to study how a plant converts a physical stimulus such as gravity into a biochemical and developmental response. He says the company has not steered his basic research to potentially more commercially viable topics. The multiyear funding has allowed him to devote himself more to teaching and less to grant writing. Slotkin also sees benefits for the students in his short-term respite from grant writing. "With this newfound time, I've seen professors spend more time at the bench," he explains. "The lab is much more successful and productive to have an expert in the field sitting at the bench with you, which is different than an expert in the field sitting in their office where you come and show them your data." Twenty-three out of the 27 PMB faculty have agreed to participate in the TMRI agreement, with all 23 receiving grants ranging from $75,000 to $200,000. Steven Brenner, who studies functional genomics, says he didn't participate in the agreement because he joined after it was in place, and had start-up funds that allowed him to initiate new projects. Yet another long-time PMB faculty member, Donald R. Kaplan, has misgivings. "My lack of participation in this agreement stems from very basic philosophical differences," he says. "I don't think that the university should be getting in bed with industry this way." Kaplan, who pays for most of his research "out of his own pocket," says that he "did not need the money nor want to jump through their hoops. ... In my opinion, the most egregious problem these days is the exploitation of graduate students as a labor force. This Novartis deal provided no incentive to reform that. Quite the contrary, it simply reinforced it." No matter how the players side regarding PMB-TRMI, in the end, both the short-term gains and the hand wringing over propriety may be short-lived, since it may not be renewed. "We can't get used to this agreement," Slotkin says. "Is Syngenta going to want to dish out money into the public sector like this again? That's not something we can control." Karen Young Kreeger (kykreeger@aol.com) is a contributing editor for The Scientist.

University Bargains with Students' Rights

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of