Chapter 09: The Challenges of Collaboration and Proprietary Research
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Description
In this Chapter, Dr. Satterfield mentions his collaboration with Dr. Samuel Hassenbusch, M.D. in the Department of Neurosurgery to study in a study of alternatives to opioids in the treatment of neuropathic pain. He then diverts into career issues created when a researcher works on studies with proprietary devices and compounds. He explains that when work is proprietary, it cannot be published, a serious problem when publications are one of the main criteria used at MD Anderson for tenure and promotion. Dr. Satterfield notes that he “struggles with this as a career issue.” He also notes that veterinarians frequently contribute intellectually to the investigations they help support, but because they don’t have laboratories, their contributions are not as easily documented. The solution, he says, is sensitivity and awareness on the part of individuals who sit on the Promotions and Tenure Committee. He mentions that Dr. James Bowen and Dr. Stephen Tomasovic [Oral History Interview] have both been aware of the problem and helpful. He also anticipates that Dr. Ronald DePinho will appreciate the contributions that veterinarians make to drug research. At the end of this Chapter, he underscores that the faculty at The Keeling Center are collaborators in research more than service providers and that he enjoys working with others and seeing the work translated into patient-relevant practices.
Identifier
SatterfieldWC_02_20120725_C09
Publication Date
7-25-2012
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
William C. Satterfield, DVM, Oral History Interview, July 25, 2012
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - The Researcher The Researcher Devices, Drugs, Procedures Industry Partnerships On Research and Researchers On Pharmaceutical Companies and Industry Evolution of Career Professional Practice The Professional at Work Critical Perspectives on MD Anderson
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Can you give me an example that you're particularly pleased with—one of these collaborative relationships that really delighted you in how it went?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Sure. The work we did with Sam Hassenbusch, the neurosurgeon, working with a commercial company with an implantable drug delivery system that we were able to develop in an alternative to morphine delivery for spinal pain. We were able to develop a drug that was a good alternative that didn't have the side effects that morphine has—long-term morphine therapy has. It turns out that morphine given in the—to the—for spinal pain directly in the spinal cord will cause a small—it will cause a fibroma in the spinal cord and actually will end up being a space-occupying lesion that will cause a severe spinal deficit. So we had to come up with— Dr. Hassenbusch wanted to come up with an alternative to that, and I was able to work with him. We came up with one, and we ended up going to clinical trials with that. That was particularly good. I think he enjoyed that. We had— He presented that at many international meetings for neurosurgery. We were able to help some people with that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And it sounds like he was right on the same page with you about the need to follow the Good Laboratory Practice—
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Oh, yeah. He was. He understood that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. And I'm sure that helped a lot.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yeah. The documentation is—that ends up coming with these things is voluminous. It's mind-boggling.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I wanted to talk about, in more detail, some of the research studies that you've done, and since I had down the name of the drug that you tested with Dr. Hassenbusch's—midazolam?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Midazolam.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Midalozam. And I'm wondering if you would like to talk about that in a little bit more detail. I'm mean, we've kind of touched on it with this example, but how exactly did you go about doing that study? What was the method for—?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Well, the method involved using sheep and the pump—the drug pump—is one that is commercial—well, is an instrument that's been approved by the FDA for human use. We got these through— Dr. Hassenbusch acquired these from the company that manufactured them.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And what was the company?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
I don't think I'm supposed to tell you that because that's proprietary.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
That's one of the things that you have to end up doing with this FDA business is you have to be—you know—all these things are proprietary, and—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Normally, I ask that question, "Can you tell me?" but—
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yeah. I know. I'm sorry, but—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That's all right.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
I try to protect the innocent, you know. And since you brought that up, one of the complications, of course, of doing this is that companies will want us to sign a confidentiality statement. So if we have to do that, it substantially increases the cost of doing business because then there's about three to four months of legal wrangling that occurs between our lawyers and their lawyers. It's just—and so we have an agreement with the companies that we'll protect their—you know—we don't have to disclose that to anyone because it is proprietary and it involves intellectual property. So long story short, try not to talk about whom did what and when.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Sure.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
And that's a problem for us. And I'll say this—and I don't want to say it because I do proprietary studies—those are not published. A lot of work that I've done is proprietary. I've done dozens and dozens of proprietary studies. Now, if I was doing— In a basic science lab, I would probably have dozens and dozens of publications based on those studies, but because they're proprietary, I don't own them, and I can't publish them even if they're negative. And that's one of the issues that we struggle with is that we'll do something that doesn't work, and probably that would be important to be published because other folks with them would say, "Hey, we're not going to do that because we know— Here's a publication that indicated that it's a negative result." But you rarely see negative results ever published in any, except in major journals. So intellectually, it's important, but as far as being publishable, it's not. As far as working with companies and doing—even within our own institution—doing proprietary studies, those are not published.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Is that a career issue, too?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
It's a severe career issue. It's a big deal. And I struggle with that. I struggled with that throughout my career, and I think other folks are going to be struggling with it, too. And I've tried— When I'm on committees—and I'm on a lot of these research appointment committees, review committees—I counsel the people that I reviewed and say, "You've got to have some type of metric to indicate the effort that you put into developing products and intellectual property for the institution." And they can do it by saying, "I've done this study, which is a proprietary study that—" and put a dollar amount on it. It could be $50,000; it could be $500,000, but that would indicate how much effort went into developing this and writing a final report for it. It's huge. It's a research project in and of itself. I mean, as a PhD, you know what kind of work you have to put into that. These things are tedious. They're unbelievable. And then you can't publish them? So when you come up for a promotion or a consideration for promotion, they look at your publications and say, "You know, you don't have enough publications." And in an institution like MD Anderson, publications are one of the main criteria that they judge promotion on, in addition to education and research, and then grants and so forth. But these studies are kind of like grants. You get a grant, but you may not be able to publish any—the results of it, because you don't own them.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Right, which also—
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
I don't own them. I'm just— I'm facilitating them; I'm collaborating with them. We're doing some studies now with a couple of collaborators from Children's and from other medical institutions on ways to treat pancreatic cancer. They couldn't do it without us, but we can't publish it because of the proprietary nature of it. Now, when those things get into the marketplace ten years from now, then all that stuff's publishable. But geez—you know—ten years from now?
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, that's a long time to wait for visibility.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yeah. Here you are languishing down here in the ranks of the unknown all that time.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. It's actually surprising to me in an institution like MD Anderson where there are so many people involved in this that there hasn't been some kind of mechanism to recognize the effort.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
It's been a struggle, and as veterinarians, we really are kind of caught in the middle because we're in basic science. Basic science has the folks that review basic scientists for promotion and recognition, have their own labs. They have a particular area of concentration and expertise that they study. As veterinarians, we're working with a lot of different areas, and we don't have our own labs. We don't have our own assistants and so forth, and we're working with other folks to help them develop theirs, so—I mean—we're doing service in one regard, but it's also intellectual contributions to that project—is important to the completion or the success of the project.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What do you think the solution to that problem might be?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Well, it means that the people on those tenured and those promotion committees have to be sensitive to the areas, and a lot of them are, really are, because they work with us. And more and more of them have worked with us. I've worked with a lot of them, so when I came up, most of them knew me and said, "Oh, yeah. We know him. We know what he's done. We know his body of work and—". But there has to be a way that we can present that, and that's something I've tried to counsel all of our people here that—because we're in such a unique facility. We're not seen by folks in Houston. Male Speaker I just need to grab that laptop.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I'll just pause this for a moment. All right. [The recorder is paused.] We're back after just a brief break.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Okay. Just to go back in history, one of the former VPs, Jim Bowen, tried for years to—I mean—he would come down here and he'd say, "Yeah, I understand that, you know, what kind of work your guys are doing, and we're working to try to get—try to help you out." And then, Fred Becker [Oral History Interview] was aware of what we're doing, but I don't know that it— It didn't reach the level of importance to him that we would like for it to have reached. [Dr. Stephen] Tomasovic [Oral History Interview] was a big help. Actually, when we had— In the last few years, they have come up with this multiple-year appointment for basic scientists that—so that you still sign a contract every year. You still can, you know. It's based on the amount of money you bring in, whether you can stay or go or whatever, but that's been a help. And I think Dr. DePinho is going to be really sensitive to this because of his background in drug development.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Uh-hunh (affirmative). I can imagine.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
And I've spoken to him about it, and he does appreciate the contributions that we make. And this—going back to the Keeling Center and its uniqueness, why it's different from the veterinary section in Houston—most of what we do here is collaborative as opposed to service. We do service things, and I do a lot of service—care of chimpanzees, care of our large animal models, weekend rotations on clinics, and all of those sorts of things. But most of what I enjoy—really enjoy—doing is working with other clinicians and physicians to develop cutting-edge science, either in discovery or in development of translational products to help cancer patients. So we have an opportunity here to do a lot more collaborative work than most traditional veterinary support organizations do in medical facilities. We don't have— You know, in Houston they've got hundreds of thousands of mice there, colonies there, that are maintained by PIs doing their own studies. The vets don't get—aren't involved in most of those studies. They're just making sure those studies are being done according to how they're approved. Here, we're involved in the studies.
Recommended Citation
Satterfield, William C. DVM and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 09: The Challenges of Collaboration and Proprietary Research" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1511.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1511
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