How academia and the pharmaceutical industry can work together: the president's lecture, annual meeting of the American Thoracic Society, San Francisco, California.

There is a long history of productive collaboration between biomedical scientists in academia and in the pharmaceutical industry. The primary beneficiary of this collaboration has been the public. Since the middle of the last century, marked advances in the treatment and prevention of disease have been driven by the translational research interactions across these two domains. But now, at a time when collaboration between academia and industry should be accelerating based on past success, new technology, and ever-increasing need, numerous obstacles to effective collaboration have appeared. In this analysis, based on experience in both academia and industry, the author provides perspective on current obstacles to academic-industrial collaboration, followed by recommendations on how effective collaboration can be renewed and enhanced.