Academic-Industry Partnerships for Biopharmaceutical Research & Development: Advancing Medical Science in the U.S

Two trends in the research and development (R&D) of new medical products have been building throughout the last several decades, culminating in the expansion of academic-industry partnerships in numbers and types to such an extent that they have become a more prominent feature of the broader landscape of partnerships in biomedical innovation. On the academic side, the trend was commercialization of discoveries from basic research into medical products for the marketplace, a transformation facilitated by groundbreaking legislation in the U.S. beginning with the Bayh-Dole Act. On the industry side, it was externalization of the search for innovative R&D approaches and scientific knowledge in order to expand the capacity to address complex, unmet medical needs such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The goals of the study by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (Tufts CSDD) were twofold: 1) to examine a sample of primary data and typify the kinds of research projects that academic-industry partnerships actually entail – " the what " ; and 2) to review secondary data from the trade and professional literature as well as public and private sector websites to describe and categorize the organizational nature of these partnerships – " the how. " In terms of " the what, " CSDD reviewed primary data from over 3,000 grants involving close to 450 industry sponsors and 22 medical schools in 15 or about one-third of states and determined that they fell into three major classifications: conventional clinical trials focused on new drugs/indications (75%); conventional clinical trials targeting particular public health priorities identified by Tufts CSDD (14%); and, health research and education programs and studies (11%), as shown in Figure 1. This part of the study was not intended to capture all industry collaborations with academia (e.g., consortia) or all types of partnerships (funded versus non-funded); rather, it was intended to provide insight into one particular type of partnership, grants from industry sponsors to academic medical centers (AMCs). Secondary data from a variety of sources including company websites, newspaper articles, academic articles, investor analyses, and consultant reports were employed to describe " the how, " i.e., the actual ways and means of the working relationships between AMCs and their industry partners. While it is generally accepted that these partnerships have become an increasingly common approach both to promote public health objectives and to produce healthcare innovations, it is anticipated that their nature will continue to …