Industry support of academic life science research may be dropping

Fewer investigators report industry connections, but commercial interests keep growing

While more than half the academic life science researchers responding to a 2007 survey indicated having some relationship with industrial entities, the prevalence of such relationships – particularly direct funding for research studies – appears to be dropping. Results of the survey, appearing in the November/December 2009 issue of Health Affairs, also suggest that interest in commercial applications of research appears to be growing, even among investigators without industry funding. The new study is a follow-up to 1985 and 1995 surveys by members of the same team.

"It had been ten years since our last survey, and attitudes about academic-industry relationships have changed, leading many hospitals, universities and other research organizations to institute new conflict-of-interest policies," explains Darren Zinner, PhD, who led the study as a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Institute for Health Policy. "Additionally, the economics of the pharmaceutical and biotech industries have shifted, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget doubled in that time. All of these factors may have made faculty less dependent on industry funding. Because many of these conflict-of-interest policies are now being re-examined, it was time to repeat the study, establish new data points and analyze any trends that appeared." Zinner is now at the Schneider Institutes for Health Policy in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

In late 2006 and early 2007, the researchers mailed surveys to a randomly selected group of life science faculty members at the 50 U.S. universities receiving the most NIH support in 2004. The survey asked a range of questions about respondents' relationships and activities in the preceding three years. Of more than 2,900 eligible faculty members to whom surveys were sent, almost 2,100 replied, for a response rate of 74 percent. Almost 53 percent of respondents reported some sort of industry relationship in the preceding three years – most frequently consulting, paid speaking, research grants and contracts, and scientific advisory board membership.

Overall, 20 percent of research faculty received industry funding in 2006, a significant decrease from the 28 percent of faculty in 1995. For those with industry support, the magnitude of per-investigator funding remained essentially unchanged, indicating a decrease in overall corporate spending in academic life-science research. As in the previous studies, industry relationships were more common among senior faculty members, with full professors being up to twice as likely as junior faculty to be involved with industry.