The Benefits of Universities and Biotech Working Together

Over the past century, we have seen drastic and positive changes in the way our health care system operates, largely because of the modern advances in science, medicine, technology and research.  Much of America’s progress has come from the laboratory of private industry as well as academic medical centers and research institutions.

However, over the past several years, there has been a constant strain on progress in the life sciences and medical industry.  Two separate, but related reasons have caused this.

First, the declining economy.  The recession and the huge hit the American economy took have affected all industries.  The effect is especially widespread in state budgets and at universities. As a recent article in Xconomy noted, “These are hard times at universities in America … [and] State support is dwindling, tuition is booming, and federal research dollars are in jeopardy.”

Second, is the increased scrutiny on academic-industry collaborations, coupled with overly strict and intrusive institutional policies that have prohibited and stigmatized the value of such relationships.

Yet, the article noted that, “U.S. academic research centers are still the driving force for some innovative new medicines, like always.” In fact, the article pointed to one university in particular, University of California at San Francisco, which is under the leadership of Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann.

Desmond-Hellmann, a biotech industry star from her days running drug development at Genentech, “has her work cut out in her third year as UCSF’s chancellor.”

UCSF is a complex, 23,000-employee enterprise that does everything from studying the basic functions of stem cells to helping discover new drugs to treating patients. Starting in August 2009, she’s had the unpleasant job of overseeing furloughs, layoffs, and multi-million-dollar budget cuts. She’s said no, repeatedly, to promising new scientific initiatives.

But she hasn’t been stuck on the defensive the entire time. UCSF has struck a number of creative partnerships with companies like Pfizer, Sanofi, and Bayer, which are being closely followed at other universities. UCSF has also found a way, with the help of some big-time philanthropy, to break ground on two ambitious projects—a $1.5 billion hospital complex and a $200 million neurosciences research facility in the Mission Bay district. There in the same neighborhood, the university has also continued to support QB3, an incubator where academic scientists are starting companies that test whether their ideas just might have what it takes to become new drugs, devices, or diagnostics.

Xconomy times interviewed Desmond-Hellmann to learn about her plans and some of these themes. Desmond-Hellmann said she has a 3-year plan with measurable goals that she says will make her and her team clearly accountable for delivering what they promise.

She asserted that, “At a terrible time, with a rotten California economy, a rotten national economy, a rotten state of the world, people will see there was a medical center, an academic center in California, that positioned itself to have its best days.”

What was most important about Desmond-Hellmann’s interview was her recognition that, “Working in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies is definitely a part of the future of advancing health.” She maintained that, “financially, these deals are small potatoes, and aren’t going to close any budget gap.” For example, “even if UCSF researchers made a breakthrough cancer drug that generates billions of sales per year, it would likely only throw off a royalty stream to the university worth a few million a year—nice, but not exactly a big deal for a multi-billion-dollar institution.”

Nevertheless, Desmond-Hellman asserted that, “these collaborations are about improving the flow of basic research through development.”  And these collaborations are important because academic centers need to be able to prove that they have discovered a breakthrough drug that helps people live longer, better lives, instead of just publishing papers.

Unlike most university leaders, Desmond-Hellmann knows first-hand how much time, money, and risk is involved in creating something new to improve health. And she knows about the tensions between academia and industry. While some, in particular at UCSF, are against academic-industry collaboration, the nature of the economy and regulatory environment shows a tremendous need for these relationships.

Moreover, while industry research and development operations may be big, they are also feeling the same pressure to make cuts as universities. Accordingly, “What’s needed now are the creative partnerships, where someone knowledgeable about the whole process (like maybe a Desmond-Hellmann) steps in and finds a way to more seamlessly bring together industry and academia around what they have in common:” helping patients through new treatments.

The author noted that, “The old way of doing things doesn’t really work anymore. Often, some of the best research ideas would get handed off from academia to a company at a very raw stage of development. But few venture capitalists are funding startups at this early stage of development these days, and Big Pharma R&D has always tilted more heavily toward D than R. The economy has put more pressure on companies to tilt that balance even further away from research, and more toward late-stage development that has a chance to bear fruit in the near-term.”

As a result, the author asserted that, “Universities need to recognize this is how things are” and “if they want to truly translate their innovations into products that help patients, they will have to carry the research a little further downfield themselves.” Fortunately, “some Big Pharma companies have already shown they are willing to sponsor this kind of on campus work at UCSF and elsewhere.”

While “some academics sneer at this late-stage research/early-stage development work,” Desmond-Hellmann recognized that, “There’s a technical competence in taking a discovery from a lab and turning it into a medicine.” She added that, “It’s embarrassing that people don’t honor that technical competence.”

The author predicted that, “If Desmond-Hellmann can persuade her colleagues on campus to rally around this idea—that it’s about science that can impact health, not just science for the sake of more science and grants—then this initiative will be a huge success.”

Ultimately, it was “Academia that gave birth to the biotech industry in the first place, during another decade of recession and malaise: the 1970s.”

Now is the time to create “something equally as big,” despite all the economic challenges, but this can only happen if people in academia and industry can set aside some of their small differences and truly work together.