In 1978, Loeb University Professor Walter Gilbert '53, left his post as a tenured professor in molecular and cellular biology and set out to stake a claim in the emerging frontier of commercial biotechnology.

He helped found and direct Biogen, today the sixth-largest company in the biotechnology industry.

Though Gilbert returned to Harvard in 1987, links between the biotech industry and faculty members have developed into the diverse network of partnerships that exists today. Not only have some professors founded companies, but they serve on boards of directors and scientific advisory boards as well.

Mark S. Ptashne, former Smith professor of molecular biology, and Thomas P. Maniatis, Lee professor of molecular and cellular biology, founded Genetics Institute in 1980. Maniatis then served on the company's scientific advisory board and board of directors for 17 years, until the institute was bought out by American Home Products, a large Pharmaceutical company, in 1997.

"On the science advisory board, the main role was to critically evaluate the science and help plan and direct the direction of the science," Maniatis says. "On the board of directors, I was involved in strategic planning and the financial direction of the company."

Biotechnology companies may also benefit from research at Harvard by purchasing the rights to inventions developed in University labs or hiring professors to conduct publishable trials to test the safety of new products, says Steven Push, vice president for corporate communications at Genzyme, another Cambridge-based firm.

The companies cover the expenses of the trial but do not have to pay the researchers' salaries, and the researchers generally publish their results.

Academia vs. Commercialism

Despite the wide range of interactions betweenprofessors and biotechnology companies, there is aclear distinction between academic and industrialresearch.

"Science that's done in academia is generallyfocused on purely creating new knowledge," Gilbertsays. "The time horizon can be quite long; thecriterion is the significance of that knowledge."

In contrast, biotechnology firms are driven bycommercial motivations to engage in research thathas immediate practical applications, he says.

Because of their different motives, theresearch interests of academic and commercialscientists frequently diverge.

For the most part, the companies make drugsfrom human proteins, as they did twenty years ago,while academic scientists have moved on to newareas of research, Gilbert says.

"[Biotech research] involves medical knowledgebut no profound knowledge of how the world works,"he adds.

Gilbert also says commercial researchers maypick up where academic scientists leave off.

Because of their more applied researchinterests, Gilbert says scientists at HarvardMedical School (HMS) are more likely to shareresearch goals with industrial scientists.