| Patrick O. Brown |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
Matsubara(Chairman):
Thank you very much, Dr. Pat Brown. I think we have a few more minutes to accept questions or comments from the floor.
Questioner 1:
Dr. Brown, thank you very much for your wonderful presentation. I have one question about intellectual property issue. Your philosophy to share, especially the Public Library of Science, is a wonderful idea. Compared to the Affymetrix's approach, to do this in academic sector is very important, but knowing the Stanford's principle of the technology license office, there are good people, how do you deal with the intellectual property issue to be compatible with the wide distribution? That's the No. 1 question.
Brown:
That's an excellent question. At Stanford, and I think this is true that at most universities in the United States, the intellectual property developed by faculty belongs to the university and not to an inventor. So, the decision about what happens to the intellectual property is in the hands of the technology licensing office. When I started out, I was quite naive about the whole business but I have a quite good working relationship with OTL. Their principle, which I think that they adhere to pretty well, is that their most important role is to make decisions that facilitate and promote research and progress. In my particular case, I've arrived at a kind of good understanding that if OTL patents anything that rise out of our work, from now on, and starting a few years ago, no matter what, they will only ever be non-exclusive licenses. They also have a policy, which I think is consistently adhered to, that they don't enforce a patent - and make sure that the licensees will not enforce it - against non-proprietary academic use of the technology.
It's a kind of tricky question because I don't have control over the intellectual property. But I think the people at the Stanford licensing office are doing the best they can. I'll just add one quick thing, which might be an interesting subject for debate, since I realize that it's not simple. I think that the policy for the universities, especially for public universities, ought to be that the intellectual property that universities generate belongs to the public and they don't try to profit from it. I think this simplifies the definition of the University's mission and avoids a lot of complicated situations. I don't think that it's likely to happen, but I think that would be a better policy.
Questioner 2:
Thank you for your nice presentation. I hope you to enjoy the rest of your stay in Japan. You have been developing a really nice system for the microarray and also you really contribute a lot to distribution of this technique. My question is what is the most difficult point in developing all the technologies, for developing the pins, arrayers, scanners, and software. And what environment or what education can really achieve this type of great science.
Brown:
Nice to see you Yasushi. That's a complicated question. I think the most complicated steps, the most difficult steps in the development, I think for me the most difficult steps were the need all along, particularly in the early stages, to persuade funding agencies to provide necessary funding and resources to keep the project going. That is a very difficult challenge. I think the funding agencies I had a support from - the Howard Hughes medical institute, which is a wonderful organization, and the National Institute of Health, really try to foster original research. But it's a big challenge to get funding for unfamiliar proposals particularly for technology development. I was the furthest thing from a recognized expert in engineering or for that matter in genetics at the time I proposed this project. It's hard to get something like that funded. That is a big struggle. I think I succeeded in getting the work done with the funding I managed to get, by trying to get people to give me free stuff as much as possible. I actually had to get pretty adept at mooching. I think the ability to mooch, (do you know the word?) the ability to get people to give you free stuff, I think, is one of the most important skills a scientist can have. The other question was what kind of institution can foster, is good at fostering, that is to say, original and innovative research. I think the most important thing that's under appreciated is you have to have a tolerance for good efforts that fail completely. If you want people to do innovative things that succeed, you have to make it OK for people to try innovative things that completely fail. Otherwise, people won't take risks to their careers and to their funding and so forth. It's a very difficult balance, but the universities, I think, do that reasonably well. Because they don't have some of the constraints that companies have, you know, in a company that has to make a profit you are working against time, you have to produce in a finite amount of time, but I think non-profits actually buffer that a lot. The most important thing is to make it OK, if people try something and you recognize that it's a good idea and worth trying but it doesn't work, that it's recognized that's not a failure.
Questioner 3:
My question is about stomach cancers. In all of cancers in Japan, 30 percent of cancers are stomach cancers. My question is if you can detect stomach cancers including stomach cancers caused by a virus.
Brown:
If I understand the question correctly, there is a small significant fraction of stomach cancers associated with Epstein-Barr virus infection, in which the viral genome is found in the cancer cells. It's strongly, but circumstantially implicated in causing cancer. When we looked at those cancers and patients with that viral infection, we did find some very distinctive features. The technology that I was talking about wasn't primarily for detecting the cancer and these cancers we studied were removed from patients with obvious cancers. Our work was aimed at molecularly characterizing them. If I understand the question properly, we have looked at those EBV associated gastric cancers, and they do have some distinctive molecular characteristics, yes. This work has not been published, but the data is already available for free on our website.
Matsubara(Chairman):
I'd like to thank very much to Dr. Pat Brown, and I think we all sensed about his warm personality from his talk and also we are very much delighted in hearing his words from the heart of the scientist. I hope his contributions in the life sciences and other new technological development will be very much rewarded in future. Thank you very much.
|
|
|
