GLOBAL HEALTH | Addressing the world’s health challenges
05 December 2008
Foundation Tests Entrepreneurial Model for Medical Research
Alternative to government funding stresses collaboration, drug discovery
Washington — In contrast to the way many governments fund biomedical research, the nonprofit Myelin Repair Foundation uses a business approach to promote scientific discovery at universities and move the results into the clinic.
The foundation’s funding model, a hybrid between practices of nonprofit scientific research entities and for-profit pharmaceutical companies, stresses communication and collaboration. This new model could affect research funding around the world.
Founded in 2002, the Myelin Repair Foundation (MRF) aims to accelerate the discovery, development and delivery of treatments to people with multiple sclerosis, an incurable condition in which myelin, the fatty sheath that insulates neurons, is progressively destroyed.
Currently, most biomedical research relies on central government funding. In the United States, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards grants to individual university scientists to work on projects that NIH determines are a priority. Other countries employ similar models — for example, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the United Kingdom’s Research Councils UK.
In the last decade, a few small organizations have adopted an entrepreneurial model, funding select university scientists to collaborate and solve a specific problem with direct implications for disease treatment. A high-profile example is MRF, based in California’s Silicon Valley high-tech corridor: It has identified 19 potential therapeutic targets, filed several patents and raised $23 million.
INDEPENDENCE VERSUS COLLABORATION
Although NIH’s goal is to prevent, cure and treat disease, much of the research it funds is aimed at expanding knowledge rather than developing specific treatments. Additionally, universities reward faculty members for publishing their discoveries, not for translating their discoveries into medical applications.
NIH usually funds independent, investigator-driven research rather than collaborative efforts to solve a specific problem. Scientists receive NIH funding for one project, but can use the money for a different project — as long as a project is successful, the money is well spent. Nobel laureate Martin Chalfie said he often uses NIH money to work on projects other than the ones for which he received specific funding. (See “Sweden Honors American Nobel Laureates.”)
In contrast to the NIH approach, MRF funds a handful of researchers at universities around the United States to work together on a specific problem, provides the infrastructure to protect intellectual property arising from these discoveries and then attempts to license findings to biotech and pharmaceutical companies for drug development and clinical trials.
MRF-funded scientists must perform the experiments proposed in the funding request, or they will lose their funding.
They also must share data frequently, in many cases well before verification, in contrast to typical academic collaboration in which data are shared only after they have been published or submitted for publication. Critics argue that collaborating and securing intellectual property at the expense of publication hampers the free flow of scientific information.
“We’ve never delayed or restricted one of our investigators” from publishing his or her work, MRF Chief Operating Officer Russell "Rusty" Bromley told America.gov. Ben Barres, who leads an MRF-funded lab at Stanford University in California, agreed, saying he has never been prevented from openly discussing his unpublished work at scientific meetings.
TRAINING YOUNG SCIENTISTS
Bromley said working in an MRF-funded lab gives graduate students exposure to drug development and intellectual property issues, areas that tend to be ignored in university doctorate programs.
Trent Watkins, a former graduate student in Barres’s lab who is now a postdoctoral fellow at biotechnology company Genentech, praised the MRF for enhancing his graduate school experience. “We got a broader perspective on the drug-discovery process than is typical in most academic labs.”
Bromley believes so strongly in bringing the best talent to work on myelin repair that he personally has recruited young scientists to work in MRF-funded labs — something unheard of in the world of conventional funding.
Recently, Robin Avila, who had just received her doctorate in Boston, interviewed for a research fellowship in MRF investigator Brian Popko’s laboratory at the University of Chicago but was considering several other opportunities.
Bromley flew to Boston, took Avila to dinner and explained how MRF provides a unique opportunity to help patients with multiple sclerosis. Avila accepted a position in Popko’s laboratory.
“It was very exciting to hear about the top myelin labs that were a part of the MRF, how each lab was focusing on different aspects of [multiple sclerosis] research, and about the collaboration that was happening between the labs to understand the disease,” Avila told America.gov. “The opportunity to be a part, even a small part, of this foundation was influential in my decision to join Dr. Popko's lab.”
FOUR CORE LABORATORIES
The four primary MRF investigators lead labs in the United States; a fifth, based in Canada, left due to administrative constraints but remains involved with MRF. Several other scientists receive smaller grants for smaller projects.
Bromley said that MRF is open to funding the best scientists anywhere in the world. MRF’s annual meeting brings together scientists funded by MRF, non-MRF-funded scientists from around the world and other interested parties, including patients with multiple sclerosis.
MRF funding remains by invitation only. The absence of an open competition for funding is efficient, but might open the door to cronyism, some say. MRF grants are reviewed by scientific experts who are not eligible for funding. (In the NIH system, reviewers frequently compete for NIH funding.)
Entrepreneurial funding models like MRF could be adopted in many countries but are unlikely to replace traditional funding programs, like the NIH. “A lot of the best research is still independent,” Barres said. To protect intellectual property and deliver “license friendly” targets to drug companies is time-intensive. It is prohibitively costly for universities to provide similar types of technology-transfer support for every project from every one of its scientists.
More information on the Myelin Repair Foundation is available on the organization’s Web site.
