Research updates

Center proposes solution for ag biotech licensing disputes

While UC earns significant royalties from plant patents, such as strawberry cultivars, intellectual property issues prevent the University from releasing new cultivars that use modern methods of genetic modification. At a recent workshop at UC Berkeley, researchers proposed a global clearinghouse for intellectual property related to agricultural biotechnology.

With concerns growing over the "Balkanization" of agricultural biotechnology, a summit at UC Berkeley was convened Feb. 16 to explore new mechanisms for facilitating freer exchanges of intellectual property.

The workshop sought to address a troubling dilemma: Potentially useful discoveries in agricultural biotechnology are being made in university and commercial laboratories around the world, but many never make it to market because of the legal quagmire that results when the inventors try to secure all the necessary intellectual property rights.

"Any commercialization of research and development at a university that uses technologies owned by others will have to deal with a lot of legal hassle and uncertainty," says Gregory Graff, a UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate in Agriculture and Resource Economics.

More than 100 people from industry, academia, government and other organizations attended the daylong workshop and roundtable discussion, which was organized by UC Berkeley's Center for Sustainable Resource Development (CSRD) and the UC Office of Technology Transfer. The workshop was funded by the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Giannini Foundation and Farm Foundation.

"As agricultural research in genetics, breeding, agronomy, pest control, agroecology and related systems becomes more and more intertwined and complex, new agricultural research inevitably depends more and more on access to knowledge and biological materials that have already been claimed as proprietary," Graff and CSRD director David Zilberman wrote in a paper prepared for the workshop.

UC currently holds 125 agricultural biotechnology patents, the most of any U.S. university. However, while UC has been on the cutting edge of innovation in agricultural biotechnology, these techniques are not widely applied on the state's farms, Graff says. "Growers are not getting the best genetics, because the technologies are tied up in court, on the laboratory shelf or in the research greenhouse. We want to cut through the legal thicket over intellectual property and get the right genetic improvements out into the right fields."

Furthermore, UC has suffered from many of the licensing problems catalogued by workshop participants, including inexperience among researchers, high transaction costs, litigation, liability concerns and prior secrecy agreements.

The current U.S. patent system is in "terrible shape in terms of giving people certainty over who owns what," says Brian Wright, UC Berkeley professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Intellectual property rights issues, Graff says, are having a significant impact on: scientists in developing countries; research on "minor crops," which account for more than 95 percent of California crops; land-grant universities; and commercial biotechnology companies.

Graff and Zilberman have joined others in proposing a global intellectual-property-rights clearinghouse which would provide a centralized, Internet-based mechanism for exchanging patent information and licensing rights related to agricultural biotechnology. For example, the clearinghouse could gather interdependent patents from their various owners, and provide the whole bundle to researchers or potential developers of commercial products, on special terms.

At the workshop's roundtable discussion, "everyone liked the word clearinghouse," Graff reports. "All the participants agreed that something needs to be done. However, the devil is in the details." -Janet Byron

For more information, go to: www.cnr.berkeley.edu/csrd/technology/ipcmech/

Exotic pest research goes high-tech

Workers put the finishing touches on the new $15 million Insectary and Quarantine Facility at UC Riverside, top.It replaces the 1930 entomology building, below, which has been deemed seismically unsafe.

California's battle against exotic pests will go high-tech on April 11, when UC Riverside opens a state-of-the-art facility permitting scientists to expand use of exotic organisms in biological control research, and to carry out related genetic engineering.

The new Insectary and Quarantine Facility will nearly triple UC Riverside's capacity to serve the Western states and the nation in the importation, evaluation and rearing of natural enemies. The physical containment facilities will enable scientists to safely investigate exotic parasites, microorganisms and predators, as well as genetically engineered organisms such as more potent microbial insecticides.

Research on natural enemies and exotic pests, if performed in a highly secured facility, could yield vital information about exotic pests that pose threats to the state and nation. To date, the lack of up-to-date quarantine facilities has restricted the importation of exotic beneficial insects for research; the lack of secure containment facilities has virtually prohibited the use of exotic pests for research.

"When a new pest is introduced to one area of the state, we can investigate the exotic pest in a contained laboratory, learning the extent of its potential damage, and how best to control it," says Tim Paine, chair of UC Riverside's entomology department.

"It may also be possible to conduct research that will help prevent exotic pests from becoming established in California. For example, if we can study the behavior and biology of an exotic insect such as Asian longhorned beetle, we may develop better trapping technologies or better approaches to early detection, interception or eradication."

Since 1955, a new insect pest has been introduced into California every 60 days. Exotic pests cost California an estimated $3 billion each year, or more than $100 per capita annually. Nationally, pests and diseases account for a 25% annual loss to agricultural production.

UC Riverside's $15 million facility will replace the campus' existing insectary, originally built in 1930 and expanded in 1960. Recognition that scientists at UC, and throughout the western United States, were operating with antiquated facilities inspired a 1991 initiative spearheaded by the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (DANR). DANR secured funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA). UC Riverside's College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences provided the balance of construction costs.

The Riverside facility will soon be complemented by a sister facility at UC Davis, which is scheduled to break ground in April and will cost about the same. They will have similar equipment, allowing arthropod research, plant disease research and plant genome modification. The two facilities may emphasize different research areas.

The UC Riverside facility will consist of two receiving rooms, six research laboratories, 12 greenhouses, three environmental rooms and 64 rearing rooms. Each of these rooms must have its own climate control meaning temperature, humidity and lighting that can closely mimic climatic conditions hospitable to insects brought here from all over the world.

"The facility is ingeniously designed to prevent exotic or genetically modified organisms from escaping to the outside environment, and to prevent contamination between laboratories," Paine says. "For instance, the building consists of three floors and three interstitital spaces between and above floors, allowing building maintenance and repairs to be done without workmen ever entering quarantine spaces."

Secured areas are sealed by magnetically controlled, air-locked double doors. Air pressure is greater in the hallway than in rooms so that when doors open, insects or other organisms will not be carried out on air currents. All air into and out of the laboratories and greenhouses will be filtered, screening microorganisms and pollen. Equipment and solid waste leaving the facility will be decontaminated.

Before bringing exotic organisms such as insects into the facility, researchers must receive permits from the USDA and CDFA, as well as approval from an internal review committee. Once granted, researchers must adhere to a strict protocol for movement of insect and plant materials. -Janet White