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The Search for Money
quadruple that figure by 2002. The school has little
choice. As a field, the clinical-trial market is exploding by as much as
40 percent per year. "The last four or five years show that budgets for
basic research funding are harder and harder to finance," he warns. "We
have 230 clinical faculty being squeezed to death by reductions in
federal funding for research and by managed health care. Because of that
danger, we really need to look at other ways to generate income to keep
things going."
The administration is listening. Last summer, it signed a landmark deal
with international pharmaceutical giant Rhône-Poulenc Rorer (RPR).
Over five years, RPR will provide $5 million in grants to Stanford
researchers in gene therapy and drug discovery. Researchers from a
number of departments - outside the medical school as well
will submit project proposals to RPR, which then will quickly approve
those it finds intriguing. Stanford, in turn, will hold the rights to
any new technologies developed from the projects and RPR can then
license them.
It is a win-win for both sides. Usually, a researcher goes with hat out
to a company or solicits federal money (and waits nine months for an
answer - probably negative if the idea is cutting-edge). With RPR,
the more imaginative the idea, the better.
"People can write down their hot ideas and get them funded for a couple
years at a pretty good amount," says Helen Blau, who, as chair of the
department of molecular pharmacology and director of gene therapy
technology, serves as Stanford's liaison with RPR. "Everyone benefits
from this arrangement. It's playing to the strength of Stanford, which
is innovative technology."
No one is more excited than Thierry Soursac, RPR's vice president and
the executive who negotiated the deal. He sees it as ideal for a company
that wants to tap into Stanford's enormous potential. His enthusiasm
alone is remarkable, considering that RPR had a long-standing
relationship with the University of California-Berkeley while
cold-shouldering Stanford. "Stanford will ask its scientists to create
research programs that will match needs expressed by RPR," says Soursac.
"It's designed for the collaboration to work from day one because of the
very extreme input of our needs in the research program." As news
spreads of the Stanford contract, Soursac has been besieged by offers to
sign similar deals with "the most prestigious universities in the
world." He expects the pact to trigger more RPR grant money for Stanford
far beyond the first $5 million.
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