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The number of biotechnology companies continues to grow at a rapid rate, and I suspect that we are at the beginning of a significant expansion and further evolution of this industry and its relationship to academic labs. Public funding for science is increasing because every informed person realizes that extraordinary research opportunities now exist. We also know from experience that the academic community is best positioned to make the important advances that are unexpected, primarily because the goals of basic research are very different from the research conducted in industry. At the same time, however, industry cannot afford to ignore these basic discoveries and has equipped itself with the technologies to rapidly take advantage of new developments. Today, the biotech and pharmaceutical industry laboratories are much more well equipped for modern biology than are the academic laboratories; they cannot afford not to be.
The cost of modern biological research in academic laboratories is increasing with the complexity of the tasks. Unfortunately, public funding for equipping academic laboratories has not kept pace with the cost of the equipment. It is common these days to spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars on a single item of equipment for a single investigator, and federal funds are not easy to obtain in a timely and efficient manner, if they can be obtained at all. To ensure that the academic research laboratories do not fall behind the well-equipped industrial laboratories, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation should establish better mechanisms for providing infrastructure support. It would be very dangerous to create a wide gulf between the academic labs and the industrial labs because of the lack of equipment support in academia. Such a gap would eventually lead to a weakening of the process of innovative discovery that is the hallmark of academic research. One kind of funding mechanism for improved infrastructure might be to provide competitive, peer-reviewed, multi-year block grants to institutions that would then have access to these funds immediately. Although Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory spends a considerable amount of its resources obtained through fund-raising to equip its labs, we cannot keep pace with the constant demand for new equipment. This is, in part, because the equipment is more expensive, and also because the techniques in modern biology are more complex than they were 2030 years ago.
The existing relationship between biotechnology and academia is a healthy one for society as a whole, as long as the potential conflicts of interest are declared and understood by the public, research institutions, and scientists. The vast majority of such interactions, and certainly all of those occurring at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, benefit without compromising the goals of publicly funded research. We have in place a very effective subcommittee of the Board of Trustees that oversees interactions with private companies and enforces strict guidelines on the nature of the collaborations.
This year saw the completion of an agreement that allows Westvaco, Novatis, and Monsanto Corporations to provide infrastructure support for our research in plant biology and to help us develop a database of gene-trap and enhancer-trap lines of Arabidopsis, one of our favorite plants for biological investigation. Without the support of these forward-thinking companies, we would not have the resources to pursue this research, which will ultimately benefit the entire plant biology community. This year also saw the completion of agreements with Hoffmann La-Roche Inc., OSIP (formerly Oncogene Sciences), and Helicon Corporation to study learning and memory and with Tularik Inc. to identify new cancer gene loci. These arrangements will enable our scientists to pursue their research projects and have access to resources that otherwise would not have been available.
Because future interactions between biotech and academic laboratories will be an integral part of the larger scientific picture, we have taken steps to help establish a Biotech Park on Long Island near the Laboratory. Centers of modern biological discovery such as Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory often have attracted biotech companies to locate nearby because the proximity fosters scientific interactions and aids in recruiting scientists to their companies. The Laboratory has been involved in transferring technology to many start-up biotech companies, but most of these are located in places other than Long Island. Three of these companies, however, exist nearby and we are keen to see that they remain. To facilitate this, the Laboratory sought advice and help from New York State, and we were pleased to learn recently that Governor Pataki and the State Legislature will support the establishment of a Biotech Park adjacent to the nearby State University of New York, Farmingdale campus, a short distance from the Laboratory. Although the Biotech Park will be a separate entity from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we will help guide the facility to become a nationally recognized center of excellence in biotechnology. It is hoped that a nearby Biotech Park will attract many outstanding companies that will create a broader scientific environment on Long Island and at the same time benefit the area economically. John Cleary did much to guide us in our support of this important project; for this, and for many other matters on which he has provided sound counsel, we are very grateful.
Our own growing technology needs require that we provide an off-grounds facility to accommodate the increased DNA sequencing and gene-based research that is such an essential component of modern biological science. As the Laboratory expands its genome sequencing and related gene technologies, we need space that would best be provided by a large building located off campus. In addition, the success of our neurobiology research program has created new demands for mouse behavior facilities that cannot be incorporated into our existing infrastructure. As part of a solution for these urgent needs, we expect in the near future to acquire a sizable building that is located a short distance from the Laboratory, on the way to the Biotech Park. There, we will establish a state-of-the-art DNA technology center large enough to accommodate the expanded genome projects that we began 2 years ago, as well as behavior rooms that will do justice to the exciting neurobiology research.
Another development this year that should broaden the intellectual community on Long Island and take the Laboratory to new heights was the decision this year by our Board of Trustees to explore the possibilities of establishing a Graduate School of Biological Sciences. We already have a very expansive education program at the Laboratory, including the elementary and high school programs at the DNA Learning Center, a sizable contingent of graduate students from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook, and our advanced courses and meetings program that constitute postgraduate training for scientists. We see the possibility of starting our own graduate school, while maintaining the very valuable programs and interactions we have with SUNY Stony Brook, as very exciting. It is particularly pleasing that Winship Herr is developing the new graduate school that will take Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory into a new era.
As the pace of biological discovery evolves, so too, does the Laboratory. Any research institution must adapt to the sometimes dramatic changes in modern biological research. The projects and thinking I have outlined are all essential for our research institution to remain dynamic. At the same time, we must make sure that our scientists are supported to the fullest extent possible and that the research remains of the highest possible quality, in the new academic style.
Bruce Stillman
April 1998
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