Industry Funding Posted on March 30, 2009 Be aware of agreements with industry that include a publication delay, advises Keith A. Trujillo (bio).

So in addition to the federal funding and state funding and other sorts of government funding, there are opportunities to get funding from private groups, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry and things like that. And often times there are a lot more strings attached to that sort of funding.

And most institutions have boilerplate language where they will protect the independent investigator in setting up the funding with the pharmaceutical industry or with the biotechnology, and so the lawyers have already established things. The university has policies around that.

But sometimes they haven't yet. They haven't had the opportunity to seek out that sort of funding, and in that case it's very important for the individual investigator to very carefully think about the many issues involved. And it not only involves gaining the funding, but what you can do with the research after you get the funding.

It's unheard of for industry to say you cannot publish a finding, even if it damages our product, but what they will say is that we request a time, a certain period of time, perhaps six months, perhaps a year, to be able to view your data before you take it to publication. And so in that case, in that particular case, what you see is a delay in being able to take your research out.

And so that's also a potential problem with getting funding from those sources, particularly if it's a very fast-moving area. If you want to get that research finding out quickly and the company has this stipulation to where you cannot publish it within six months or within a year of disclosing it to the company, then somebody could scoop you.

In my area of research where I do use drugs as tools and I will seek some funding and seek resources, research tools, drugs as research tools, from companies, I'll go ahead and sign on with an agreement like that, where there could be a potential delay, because it's not going to hinder my research in any serious manner and because my findings will probably not lead to any significant delays in the work. It would be pretty straightforward in my work coming out.

But again, if it's a situation in which it's a very rapidly moving field, then you probably want to try and seek out other sources of funding to try and get that because there will likely be some delays getting funding from pharmaceutical industry or biotechnology.

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