University/Academia Associations:

Collaboration between industry and academics is common in the development of vaccines, drugs, herbal medicines and devices, as it can be mutually beneficial. The academics provide access to trial participants and clinical and methodological expertise, and industry provides funding and expertise. The degree of independence and the roles of academics and industry vary across trials. Trials may be run by academic trial units independently but with unrestricted industry funding, or the only contribution from industry could be free provision of study drugs. Alternatively, academics may be involved in trials as honorary authors to give a trial scientific credibility and downplay the role of the industry funder.

Previous work and examples suggest that collaboration between academics and industry may result in commercial considerations outweighing science and constraints on academic freedom. For example, previous studies have found that some trial agreements permit funders to block publication. Furthermore, academics have reported problems with stalling of publications, restriction of publication rights, and threats to never fund their institution again owing to reporting of negative results or harms.

Although most clinical drug and device trials are funded by industry, the nature of the collaboration between industry and academics has received little attention. Previous studies have considered the question on a general level. To our knowledge, no studies have surveyed the role and practices of academics, industry, and contract research organizations (CROs) when collaborating in relation to specific clinical trials of vaccines, drugs, or devices. Our objectives were to determine the role of academic authors, funders, and CROs in industry funded trials of vaccines, drugs, and devices and to determine lead academic authors’ experiences with industry funder collaborations.