Industrial drug discovery, in turn, can stimulate and enable further pathophysiologic understanding, commonly achieved by applying the existing machinery of academic cardiology with industrial grant funding. A symbiotic relation exists in which academic resources and expertise are harnessed in perfecting study design and recruiting, testing and caring for patients in the context of therapy assessment. To the problem of academic center inefficiency is added the problem of overhead costs which support the academic machinery, also tending to make the academic center less attractive than the growing cadre of alternatives for industrial contracts. It is clear that important symbiosis and synergy exist between academic cardiology and industry. However, loss of the distinction between these entities is inherently dangerous.
Research entails free inquiry which often fails to support preconceived ideas.
Serendipitous findings, and resulting development of new lines of inquiry, must allow the capacity for failure. By its structure and purpose, industry must minimize failed efforts and must focus its resource allocations toward prespecified applications of new knowledge. Thus, industry is most efficient if its work is based on fundamental knowledge which already has been developed and tested. Redevelopment of the academic environment within the industrial sector inherently is uneconomical and is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future. Conversely, in the absence of an environment which fosters unfettered inquiry, new knowledge is unlikely to develop at the rate our society implicitly has come to expect.