Happy with their divorce

Although much progress in drug discovery is due to cooperation between academia and industry, very close collaborations may result in toe-stomping, particularly when academic and industrial goals come to cross purposes. A good example is the tight binding of Human Genome Sciences Inc. with The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) under a 10-year agreement that came to an end last week.

HGSI Chairman and CEO William Haseltine acknowledged the value of the company's five-year association with TIGR. The alliance, however, has been "of decreasing value over time," he said. TIGR, which was launched in 1992 as a non-profit research organization, initially was partially funded by HGSI in exchange for intellectual property rights to the institute's discoveries...