Tun-Hou Lee, an associate professor of virology at the Harvard School of Public Health, is the co-inventor of a number of Harvard-owned patents.

Several of these patents have been licensed to a biotechnology firm, Cambridge Biotech, in which Lee and his family own stock.

Since the patents are held by Harvard, Cambridge Biotech must pay royalties from the sale of those patented products to the University. And under a distribution agreement within the University, Lee, as the co-inventor, receives a fraction of the royalties.

What some may find surprising is that according to Harvard University regulations, Lee has done nothing unethical or illegal.

But many within the University say close connections like Lee's between Harvard professors and biotechnology firms is cause for concern.

By all accounts, an overwhelming majority of Harvard's biochemistry and Medical School professors have some relationship with biotech companies. That relationship can range from simply owning stock in the company, to sitting on the scientific advisory board or board of directors of the company, to even founding or running the company.

Many professors--even those who say they believe such relationships are beneficial--concede that there is a problem when company interests begin conflicting with the University's goal of educating students.

The History

Loeb University Professor Walter Gilbert, who works in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department, says the "uneasy relationship" between the university and biotech companies go back to the 1970s and '80s.

In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that a human-made microorganism qualified as patentable matter. The same year, Congress passed the Patent and Trademark Amendment Act, allowing universities to receive patents directly, license patent rights and collect royalties on inventions from federally-funded research without seeking waivers from federal agencies.

These changes opened the door for academic scientists and universities to pursue the commercial aspects of biotechnology, according to an article in Technology Review by MIT professor Charles Weiner in 1986.

According to Weiner, the changes transformed biology virtually overnight. Academic biologists have become consultants, advisors, founders, stockholders and contractees of new biotechnology firms, he wrote.

In his 1982 book Beyond the Ivory Tower, then-Harvard president Derek C. Bok wrote, "The great majority [of people] are concerned that programs to exploit technological development will confuse the university's central commitment to the pursuit of knowledge and learning by introducing into the very heart of the academic enterprise a new and powerful motive--the search for commercial utility and financial gain."

Bok wrote that the possibility of making money by exploiting a commercially attractive discovery was against the basic tenet of the university.

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