A Firm, No

Research vs. profit at Harvard

Would Harvard University help form a commercial company to profit from the research of Harvard scientists? For a while the answer seemed to be yes. President Derek Bok floated just such a proposal last month. The centerpiece of the plan was a gene-splicing technique, developed in the labs of Molecular Biologist Mark Ptashne, that can be used to make interferon. In the future, sale of interferon and other genetically engineered products could bring in millions of dollars, so the idea of creating a company to develop and eventually market such products seemed attractive to the managers of Harvard University's $1.6 billion endowment. But as campus debate ensued, the faculty turned out to be sharply opposed to the plan, and last week Bok announced it had been dropped--at least for the present. "I have concluded," he said, "that Harvard should not take such a step unless we are assured that we can proceed without the risk of compromising the quality of our education and research."

One faculty concern was that the exchange of ideas and research among colleagues would dry up as professors came to regard their research as a trade secret. Said Microbiologist Jonathan Beckwith: "I already know of several other universities where people within the same department won't communicate with one another because they are directors of competing companies outside the university." Even more disturbing was the danger that grants of promotion or time off for company-connected professors might be seen by colleagues as commercial favoritism. The potential for conflict of interest was obvious this month as the University of California went to court to protest that cell lines from its labs, also capable of creating interferon, had been turned over to commercial companies without the permission of the university's researchers.

At present, many universities grant licenses to private companies to use their discoveries in exchange for royalty payments. Over the years, the Procter & Gamble Co., makers of Crest toothpaste, paid Indiana University more than $2 million because Indiana held a patent on stannous fluoride. The novel element in Bok's proposal was the idea that universities could make more money by cutting out the middleman and sharing directly in the equity of their own product-development companies. As costs rise throughout higher education, commercial temptations will grow, and the search for ways to turn campus research into cam pus revenue will intensify.

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