Medical school professor Thomas Jongens earns his livelihood from grants. Each year, his lab staff churns out several 40-page grant proposals, trying to convince external organizations to pay for his fruit-fly genetics research.
But as decreased federal funding forces the University to rely less from the government dollars on which it has relied for decades, Jongens -- and many researchers like him -- may be forced to focus on research for corporate investors instead of the academic biology he wishes he could study.
"It's going to have a big, big negative impact on just our basic understanding of basic biology," Jongens said of the recent shift toward commercial funding for the sciences.
Jongens said that about 80 percent of his work is funded by the federal government's National Institutes of Health each year. He is not alone -- Penn's operating budget is dependent on over $400 million annually from the agency, which awards grants for research.
But federal budget cuts are forcing the amount of federal funding available to level out, and Penn administrators are worried. The solution, they say, is getting money from drug companies like GlaxoSmithKline, which pays the University $10 million each year to do research broadly related to drug development.
We need to find "as many avenues for the research funding as possible," said Glen Gaulton, the Medical School's vice dean for research. "The other source is industry. ... [Companies] need to have practical information because they have to tie that to a product."
According to Bonnie Gibson, a vice president in Penn's budget office, most faculty salaries in the School of Medicine grow by between 3 and 4 percent each year. They are dependent on NIH grants.
But the federal budget for grants is only growing at about a half percent per year, Vice Provost for Research Perry Molinoff said.
This is a recent trend. Ten years ago, about 20 percent of scientists who applied for NIH money received funding. Now, only 8 to 12 percent get the grants that fuel their research.
Because the University can no longer rely on the NIH to the extent that it has in the past, the Medical School created the Office of Corporate Alliances -- which specifically works to cultivate relationships between the school and pharmaceutical companies -- in August of 2003.
"Companies don't really make investments in new science and new knowledge unless it's something that will benefit their company," said Terry Fadem, the office's director. "We needed an organized focus and at least one office."
Fadem said that his staff works to match up researchers with potential corporate donors -- not to encourage drug-oriented research.
"We do no selling of anything here," he added. "We're not in the business of commercializing products for technology."
But back in the labs, the researchers are feeling pressure to go corporate.
Jongens' fruit-fly genetics research has changed. He said the push toward corporate funding has forced his lab to ignore over 50 percent of the fruit-fly genome because the research does not appear to have drug-related applications.
"It will have a big negative impact on new discoveries," Jongens said. "It's a very different way of doing science. [Corporate investors] want research that's done with a particular goal in mind."
Jongens added that multiple researchers often study one aspect that drug companies are interested in, leaving other scientific questions unanswered.
"Thinking about the next hurdle of getting the next grant is a big, big thing on our minds all the time," Jongens said. "It's really changed the atmosphere such that we are worrying about getting our grants more so than doing our work."
