Material Transfer Agreements: A University Perspective

Abstract

One of your colleagues at BigAg, Inc. (or at BigAg University) says that she'd be happy to send you her transposon insertion lines that saturate the right arm of chromosome 9; you'll just need to have a material transfer agreement (MTA) signed by your institution. Six months later, the terms of the agreement are still under negotiation, you've missed the field season, your grant has expired and there is now a better resource that's been developed at LittleAg University—and if you start negotiating an MTA now... Welcome to the increasingly complicated world of sharing research materials—those biological materials or reagents that are often essential, or at least helpful, to accelerate your own research. The tremendous advances in molecular genetics since the early 1980s brought an increased sophistication in research approaches that rely heavily on access to biological or bioinformatic resources that have been created by other researchers. This trend has been advanced further by the investment of federal agencies (notably the National Science Foundation [NSF] and the National Institutes of Health [National Institutes of Health]) and private companies in the development of genomic resources that are intended primarily as vehicles for further discovery of gene function and/or gene regulation. These types of biological and bioinformatic resources (i.e. insertional mutant populations, genome sequence databases, or novel vectors) are the most problematic with regard to sharing because they are the research tools that can lead to potentially valuable discoveries, and this invariably leads to the question of who will own or control those downstream discoveries. The NIH views the sharing of research tools to be so important to future research progress that it issued strong guidelines on the appropriate terms for transfer of research materials that contribute to, or result from, NIH-funded research (Marshall, 1999; http://ott.od.nih.gov/newpages/RTguide.htm). Similarly, the NSF, particularly in programs such as the Plant Genome Research Program that focus on the generation of research resources and tools, has specific guidelines for data and materials release and requires investigators to describe the timing, constraints, and means of release of materials developed (Silverthorne, 2003).

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