Better infrastructure: industry-academia partnerships--a marriage of convenience?

The successful design and completion of clinical trials often requires participation of both industry and academia. Although there may be differing priorities for academic and industry participants, both bring important insights and resources to the clinical trial effort. Although industry generally is primarily responsible for preclinical development and funding of the study and academia for patient recruitment and participation in the data safety monitoring board and clinical coordinating center, there are also a number of important areas, including protocol design, data analysis, and manuscript preparation where both academia and industry can supply important insights. Inherent tensions may exist in the academic-industry relationship, including important issues relating to conflict of interest for both academic and industry participants. Nevertheless, the academic-industry partnership, if appropriately organized, can perform in a synergistic fashion, allowing exploration of novel therapies, elucidation of important mechanisms, and greater understanding of critical illness through using combined approaches that generate insights unable to be provided by either partner alone.