Biotechnology : professional issues and social concerns / editors, Paul DeForest [and others].

Date:
[1988], ©1988
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Biotechnology : professional issues and social concerns / editors, Paul DeForest [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    13 largely determined its composition and research priorities. Today, out of several thousand institutions of higher education, about 200 universities constitute the academic research enterprise, with 70% or more of its funding being provided by state and federal agencies. In 1985, federal R&D funds in excess of 6 billion dollars were awarded to these research universities. The unwavering public belief in the research investment concept, that university R&D stokes the industrial engine, is evidenced by the maintenance of high government fund¬ ing levels for academic R&D in spite of growing trade deficits, the decline of U.S. tech¬ nological leadership, and a pressing need to balance the federal budget. In response to this expression of public confidence, universities have become more involved in the economy by means of increased activity in technology licensing, cooperative research with industry, and the establishment of incubator facilities and research parks. A major federal study undertaken during the Carter administration, the Domestic Policy Review, identified as a national problem a gap between research universities and industry. It concluded that new knowledge and technology were not flowing from university research laboratories to U.S. industry to the extent needed imd judged feasible. Subsequently, Congress acted to provide new incentives by adding industrial research tax credits to the tax code and, establishing, in Pubhc Law 96-517, a presumption of ownership by universities of patentable inventions produced by them under government sponsored research. This new ownership concept was a dramatic break with past prac¬ tice, having the effect of eliminating government control of, or even involvement in, university technology transfer activities. This was a key element in estabUshing a research environment in the university attractive to American industry. During this period advances in many fields of science and technology were accelerat¬ ing and the time from discovery to application of new knowledge was shrinking dramati¬ cally. By far the most remarkable and promising scientific advances were those which provided the foundation for the new field of biotechnology. In rapid succession hybridoma technology was launched by Milstein and Kohler £md recombinant DNA technology was developed by Boyer and Cohen. The commercial value of these new tech¬ nologies was enhanced by the benchmark decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Diamond vs. Chakrabarty (1980), which for the first time in U.S. history allowed the patenting of novel living organisms. The term revolution is used very sparingly in science, but in the case of biotechnol¬ ogy it seems appropriate. Even the most farsighted observers were unable to predict in advance the full impact these technologies are having on medicine, agriculture, and other fields. In the latter half of the 1980's it was evident that the biotechnology revolution was already having a major impact on the research university, its faculty, its research and training programs, and its technology creation and transfer activities. The licensing of biotechnology discoveries from academic laboratories is being encouraged by univer¬ sities and aggressively pursued by companies. In its formative years, the biotechnology industry found itself dependent on univer¬ sities for both manpower and technology. Sensing boundless new commercial oppor¬ tunities, companies, whether large or small, new or estabhshed, aggressively sought a variety of cooperative arrangements with knowledgeable, skilled, and innovative univer¬ sity researchers. Research universities willingly responded to the opportunities promised from active participation in an exciting science-based revolution of major potential benefit to society.