San Diego

The University of California, San Francisco, (UCSF) has set up a scheme to fund projects aimed at generating commercial products such as drugs or equipment.

Established by Burrill, a San Francisco venture-capital firm, the scheme will provide grants of up to $500,000 for high-risk research projects that might be unlikely to attract grants from public agencies.

If the projects are successful, Burrill would help to set up a company to exploit them, which it could own jointly with the UCSF, the faculty members involved, and the California Public Employees' Retirement System pension fund, which is making an initial investment of $10 million.

But the arrangement was agreed by UCSF administrators without formal consent from the university faculty, some of whom are concerned about its implications for academic freedom.

The deal raises “huge potential conflict-of-interest issues”, says Stanton Glantz, a cardiovascular researcher and chair of the UCSF academic senate planning committee. “This could have major impacts on the whole mission of the university,” he says.

“Unfortunately, the administration felt pressured to sign the agreement before adequate vetting by the faculty,” says Daniel Bickle, an endocrinologist and chair of the academic senate.

Zach Hall, the UCSF's vice chancellor for research, says money from the deal will go back into research. “Part of our mission as a state public institution is to make sure discoveries in labs are converted to products for public good,” he says.

The UCSF is building a biomedical research campus, Mission Bay, at which academic and privately funded researchers are expected to work in close collaboration. The university hopes that deals such as the one with Burrill will keep it in the forefront of partnerships with the private sector.