Filling the scarcity gap

While sanofi-aventis Grouphas been busy building its network of academic partnerships, its new collaboration with the University of California, San Francisco is adding some new wrinkles to the industry-academic model. The collaboration will give UCSF scientists a jump-start on the research needed to qualify for NIH grants and then give them hands-on translational experience in the pharma setting.

sanofi-aventis will fund UCSF's Program in Breakthrough Biomedical Research (PBBR), which will award 1- or 2-year grants of up to $520,000. Each year, the program expects to fund two to five projects. The pharma also will provide an additional $200,000 per year for UCSF researchers to intern at the company's facilities worldwide...