Louis Berneman, director of the technology transfer center at the University of Pennsylvania, says the number of MTAs reviewed by his office doubled over the past year, from 197 to 425. Asked to describe a problem case, an East Coast U.S. university official cited an MTA used by Novartis Pharma of Basel, Switzerland, one of the world's largest drug companies. Novartis, she said, made great demands in return for sharing a compound that has been in the clinic for 2 decades. It eventually agreed to milder terms, but only after months of negotiation. Joyce Brinton, Harvard's technology chief, says that nonprofit outfits can usually be talked out of imposing sweeping conditions.
Companies are tougher.
Julie Norris, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sponsored research office, shares this sentiment. The Eisenberg panel will have a tough time cutting through the morass of MTAs to find a consensus. And it has several cautionary examples before it. It was a kind of peace treaty endorsed by more than 100 universities, says Brinton, designed to let researchers share reagents without relying heavily on lawyers. Originally, the group hoped to create a second model MTA that could be used for interactions with private companies, but nothing came of it.