In May, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) barred its scientists from taking part in GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) Discovery Fast Track (DFT) competition just as the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) proudly announced an expansion of its Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI) drug discovery alliance with Pfizer of New York. Two months later, UCLA and GSK reconciled their differences and UCLA finally sanctioned its scientists taking part in the program. So why was one approach seen as good and the other not? The UCLA tech transfer office was concerned about the potential for disclosure of confidential information and conflict with rights to the researchers' discoveries, under the terms of participation in the GSK program. GSK's DFT competition builds on the Discovery Partnerships with Academia (DPAc) program. Launched in the UK in late 2010, DPAc invites academic partners with deep understanding of disease biology to become members of drug discovery teams. GSK brings its industrial approach to drug discovery and funds the activities. This is similar to Pfizer's CTI, which also involves joint discovery (Nat. Biotechnol. 29, 3–4, 2011) and access to the pharma partner's expertise, compound libraries and biological assays. Pearl Huang, global head of DPAc, at King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, explains that collaborations through DPAc involve complicated contract negotiations that can take time to put in place. As a way to avoid this bottleneck, DFT was conceived, “as a means to rapidly identify the most promising hypotheses in academia,” she says. It is, in other words, a giant fishing trip in which academics are invited to submit a one-page application describing a novel drug development concept. Ten winners will get access to GSK's screening facilities, and academics whose screens are successful will be offered DPAc contracts. Because UCLA requires that researchers refer potential inventions to its Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Sponsored Research before discussing them with companies, entering GSK's DFT could easily breach the rules. But Huang says there was no intention to bypass technology transfer offices. Under the amended terms, tech transfer offices will electronically monitor submissions to ensure nothing confidential is disclosed to pharma.

“The main thing is to be good at balancing,” says Susan Searle, formerly CEO of Imperial Innovations, the technology commercialization and investment group. “It's about getting the partnership right and sharing rewards,” she says.