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The Genome and Cancer
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12263 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1987 |
2,373 Words |
| Author
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Renato Dulbecco, M.D.
Renato Dulbecco shares the 1975 Nobel Prize in Medicine or
Physiology and is a distinguished research professor at the
Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. |
To set the stage for a discussion of the prospects for international cooperation in scientific research we must first consider which individuals or organizations are likely to cooperate. The two main groups are academic scientists and industrial scientists. I shall begin by dealing with cooperation and competition among the members of the two groups from the viewpoint of a biologist.
For many years, industry has been active in the field of biology. It has produced numerous reagents that are used by investigators. These reagents, however, are also often discovered by academic scientists and used by them. It is a two-way road. Among reagents are enzymes, metabolic precursors, labeled components, and antibodies, whose availability has had a tremendous impact on biological research. It would be inconceivable today for each investigator to be required to make his own reagents. If that were the case, the discoveries of the last two or three decades could have not been made. This is an important example of cooperation between academia and industry, which occurs across national boundaries.
In recent years, an important change in the participation by industry in biological research has occurred. A large number of young biotechnology industries have grown up. Although most of them are small, they are growing larger. Their presence is strongly felt among biologists, since, besides making useful products, they also conduct the kind of research that traditionally has been done by academic institutions. This appears to create a new dualism. On one side are the academic laboratories that have a policy of openness and collaboration; on the other are the industrial laboratories that practice secrecy and competition.
One might wonder whether these new industries would act parasitically by assimilating the information provided by academia while giving nothing in return. Fortunately, this is not the case. The scientists of the new biotechnology industries participate in open meetings with academic scientists and make important contributions by sharing, with considerable openness, the data obtained in their laboratories. Their results are promptly published in scientific journals, although they cannot be expected to reveal details of their current work that might give an advantage to their competitors. This same practice of early secrecy is often followed by their academic colleagues.
Industrial Contributions
On the whole, the
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