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Life Sciences Forum |
a Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York 10461, USA;
b University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio Texas 78284-7877, USA;
c Zymogenetics Inc., Seattle, Washington 98102, USA;
d University of California, Irvine, California 92612, USA;
e HHMI/Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA; and
f Genentech Inc., South San Francisco, California 94080-4990, USA
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INTRODUCTION |
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 TOP INTRODUCTION QUALITY COSTSSUPPORTING THE INTELLECTUAL...COMMITMENT FOR TECHNOLOGY...REFERENCES |
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Scientific opportunities to explore and exploit genomes, to probe the details of protein structure and function, and to achieve a molecular understanding of physiology require funding to provide for the needed technological resources. Although targeted funding areas and new programs are indeed important, opportunities will be missed for established and new programs if resources are either neglected or not shared. Inadequate investment is not only a problem facing technology resource scientists; it is an issue that concerns all experimental biologists. Availability of a group of resource laboratories providing access to focused expertise and instrumentation is essential to the needs of many evolving research programs.
Few studies have focused, or even touched on, the challenges of maintaining technology resources 1-3) . None have addressed the needs of local resource laboratories, those available to essentially all investigators. The main problems faced are 1) high-quality research facilities are costly; 2) the intellectual infrastructure requires support; and 3) academic institutions must make long-term commitments. A cooperative partnership of scientists, administration, and funding agencies is needed to make shared resources work. The issues are outlined below, together with explanation of the effects of policies and practices found to be both harmful and helpful to these laboratories and to the research communities that depend on them.
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QUALITY COSTS |
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TOPINTRODUCTIONQUALITY COSTSSUPPORTING THE INTELLECTUAL...COMMITMENT FOR TECHNOLOGY...REFERENCES |
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Application of the most advanced methodologies is often demanding and time-consuming. Development of new research opportunities may require trying different experimental approaches, testing and choosing among alternatives, taking risks. Adequate institutional support then becomes essential to sustain staff in the pursuit of new methods and to obtain equipment of the highest performance, sensitivity, and versatility. New technologies and instruments with powerful new applications for biology are constantly being developed.
Core laboratories with new equipment but without long-range plans for instrumentation upgrades, staff training, and financial support are fated to become obsolete in only a few years.
What are the costs?
Salaries and benefits, together with instrumentation costs, are
the largest expenses of any resource laboratory (4)
. As
detailed in Table 1
, the responsibilities of the scientific staff encompass a breadth
of activities not always obvious to the outsider, ranging from
experimental design and data analysis to education.
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Supplies, reagents, parts, and instrument maintenance are additional hard costs. Because advances are made so rapidly, instruments must be upgraded frequently and replaced as newer ones become available. Small instruments that cannot be purchased through instrument grant mechanisms must be budgeted. To acquire new technology, an institution may have to make an initial investment in expensive equipment, since a track record of experience is a prerequisite for shared instrumentation awards.
Education is one aspect that may be overlooked in planning resource laboratories. Courses and advanced technology meetings for resource laboratory scientists provide professional development for the staff and also benefit the institution, facilitating acquisition of new methods and technologies. Furthermore, resource scientists help local research scientists adapt new experimental approaches to their research programs via seminars, workshops, small group tutorials and individual discussion sessions, as well as teaching in courses.
Personnel, instruments, supplies, and education are all required for a successful, productive core laboratory.
Harmful policies
Problems arise when universities impose high fee requirements on
resource laboratories, forcing them to operate like businesses. No
matter how fiscally sound this may seem, it is scientifically and
intellectually shortsighted. The cost savings of a local resource
laboratory do not lie in obtaining inexpensive piecework. Rather, the
major benefits lie in preventing unnecessary replication of
instrumentation and expertise and in circumventing obstacles and delays
in obtaining access to technologies needed for funded research
projects.
In addition to the time needed to perform those analyses easily charged as fees, resource staff scientists also require time to implement new methodologies that will benefit their research environment. The experimental goals of complicated, technically demanding projects often require iterative work during their start-up phases, when sample preparation protocols and other variables must be modified in order to be successful. During this critical developmental period, full cost recovery is a barrier preventing realization of the experimental goals.
Even for mature projects, data acquisition and analysis require extensive time commitments—the most costly resource. If the time of a resource scientist is fully calculated into fees, few research laboratories could afford these experimental approaches. Furthermore, when cost recovery from recharges includes large portions of salaries and benefits for all scientific staff at whatever academic level, salaries are often not maintained at adequate levels. High staff turnover may result, with loss of technological edge and investment in training.
High fees are a disincentive to good science and sidetrack scientific opportunities.
Helpful policies
Policies fostering productive use of core laboratories have been
identified at many institutions, and more need to be developed
(Table 2
). A special fund established for each resource laboratory to
encourage young investigators to use advanced technologies helps their
scientific careers off to a sound beginning. For example, only one-half
the amount of each cost-sharing fee might be paid by an assistant
professor's research funds, with the other half paid from the special
fund. Another mechanism for stimulating use of resource laboratories by
young investigators is the inclusion of `gift certificates' for core
facility use in start-up packages. Often during the course of research
projects, unanticipated opportunities arise in which a novel technology
enables a scientific breakthrough and provides possibilities for new
funding. One way to stimulate these novel projects is to eliminate the
cost-sharing fee or to charge the fee to a small fund set aside for
this purpose, after review by the core laboratory's director and an
expert advisory committee. Similarly, projects of investigators on
crisis support could be internally reviewed and approved to obtain data
critical to their research proposals.
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Obtaining salaries for key scientific staff from center grants, program projects, or biomedical research support grants is an established mechanism for providing support for resource facilities and removing personnel expenses from cost-sharing calculations. However, it is important that the savings not simply be translated into discounts to obtain cheap work, but instead be used to provide staff scientists with the time to establish new methodologies and develop investigators' projects. At smaller colleges or universities that may not have such large programs, several researchers can pool their resources to pay for salaries and supplies.
On a practical level, institutions with effective purchasing directors can often negotiate bulk discounts on supplies and service contracts. Teamwork between resource laboratories and administration serves the interests of both. There may also be other ways in which administrators can help improve the financial situation of the core laboratory so as to improve the scientific output, but such relationships require an investment of time.
Special funds set aside for developing research programs, direct support of staff salaries, and pragmatic economies can keep fees low and stimulate research.
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SUPPORTING THE INTELLECTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE |
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TOPINTRODUCTIONQUALITY COSTSSUPPORTING THE INTELLECTUAL...COMMITMENT FOR TECHNOLOGY...REFERENCES |
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New resource technologies coupled with experimental biology have the potential to generate long-term projects that may exceed the capacity of the resource laboratory staff. This presents excellent opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to work within the resource laboratory, learning to perform and evaluate technology-based experiments. This form of joint effort enhances the scientific outcome of research projects. Furthermore, students and fellows who train either part- or full-time in resource laboratories gain excellent opportunities for scientific careers in academia or industry, particularly in biotechnology research and development.
Intellectual interactions between resource and research scientists are essential to the success of each project. When this success results in publication, a citation in the acknowledgments section of a manuscript may be appropriate for routine analysis. However, contributions from resource scientists that involve novel resource laboratory work and insight, experimental design, or advanced data analysis that make a publication possible or significantly enhance its value require coauthorship as the appropriate acknowledgment.
Core facilities are specialized research laboratories with staff scientists who contribute to research programs and whose careers must be nurtured.
Who are the essential personnel in a resource laboratory and what
are their qualifications?
The number and type of personnel in a resource laboratory will
depend on the type of technology and the size of the institution
(Table 3
). A resource laboratory director who works together with
experienced staff scientists and postdoctoral fellows helps to form a
productive and interactive laboratory environment. A senior faculty
member or administrator conversant in the technology can be a helpful
liaison to the decision-makers of the institution. A faculty committee
advisory to the core facility can help with planning and problem
solving, reviewing projects, buffering the resource laboratory against
problems anticipated and unanticipated, providing support in requests
for funds from the administration and research grants, but should be
careful not to micromanage laboratory operations.
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Depth of technology experience and good communications skills are required for resource staff scientists at every level. Integrated approaches are now required in all experimental biology disciplines (5) . For example, to appropriately address each project, a core protein laboratory can no longer focus narrowly on one technology, but must include multiple protein technologies in a problems approach such as Edman sequencing, mass spectrometry, 2-dimensional gel electrophoresis, both on-line and off-line HPLC, biosensor instruments, and instrumentation to analyze biomolecular interactions. Since early stages of sample preparation dramatically affect the success or failure of the experiments, the resource laboratory staff needs to interact with the research laboratory staff, providing advice on protein purification or design of cell culture experiments, for example. Other technologies and disciplines have similar demands, where communication and partnership between research and resource scientists benefit research.
Willingness and ability to learn and to incorporate new technologies at a rapid pace on a continuing basis are required of all resource scientists, and are critical to a successful shared resource laboratory. If it is meeting the needs of modern experimental biology, the core laboratory of today is not the core laboratory of 10 years ago, or even 2 years ago.
The final component underlying all successful resource laboratories is the ability to share (1) . Those who are active in resource laboratory operations know that sharing is a prerequisite of their daily lives. A major finding of the Institute of Medicine's 1996 study of six National Center for Research Resources-funded national resource laboratories was that sharing is a significant factor in the success or failure of these laboratories as resources. This report was the first time that scientists outside the walls of shared resource laboratories recognized this fundamental principle.
Successful resource laboratories require a variety of scientists with specialized expertise, communication skills, a lifelong interest in learning, and the ability to share.
Harmful policies
The lack of incentives to share is a crucial barrier in access to
and success of resource laboratories. Indeed, academic science often
rewards those who do not share. Despite its essential nature, there are
few professional rewards for providing technological expertise and
insight. If resource scientists are expected to share their knowledge
and experience, then academic institutions must also share, providing
them a full place in academic life.
Professional and career development for resource scientists commensurate with their skills and experience is lacking at many universities. Furthermore, graduate and postgraduate training in biomedical technologies has also been neglected. Disregarding these needs of our essential, highly trained resource scientists will risk losing them from existing university facilities, deter young scientists from training in the critical biomedical research areas, and certainly discourage them from seeking employment in universities.
Joint participation by both research and resource scientists in resource planning is essential for their success, but is not common. Disappointment can be substantial when technology facilities are relocated to beautiful new laboratories ill-suited for their experimental discipline, designed by well-meaning individuals or architects who had no notion of what is required to carry out the work. Frustration mounts when resource scientists are instructed by administrators that they must not set up advanced technologies, but should restrict themselves to more routine or conventional technologies of the sort that could be supplied by commercial vendors.
Lack of incentives to share, lack of professional opportunities, plus exclusion from long-range planning can disable resource laboratories.
Helpful policies
At the end of a recent article on the next phase of the human
genome project, Francis Collins and colleagues (6)
called
for establishing academic career paths for resource technology
scientists. The impact on the local scientific community resulting from
the activities of their core facilities should be considered in faculty
promotions. Career needs of nonfaculty resource scientists should also
be addressed. As discussed earlier, resource laboratory budgets can
also provide the support for scientific staff to attend professional
meetings or specialized courses. These professional activities clearly
provide technical and intellectual benefits not only for the staff
member, but also for their home institution. New methods and
technologies are imported to the resource laboratory, and the staff
develops a network of associates familiar with related problems that
can aid in their solutions.
Mechanisms for upgrading instrumentation must be implemented. Working with outdated technologies frustrates both resource and research scientists. Resource laboratory scientists must drive planning; they have the most expertise in the future of the technology. Resource scientists should be involved in planning core facilities for basic and clinical research from their inception, before the first blueprints are drawn or the first steps taken. Institutional funds and government agencies could support research opportunities associated with resource technologies. Education and training programs at all academic levels should be introduced, updated, and revitalized. Young scientists encouraged by expanded opportunities and a more receptive environment will nourish the science of the future (6) . These are win-win solutions that benefit everyone, encourage sharing, and nurture excellent science.
Career development, investment in postgraduate education, plus involvement in resource planning will strengthen shared resources.
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COMMITMENT FOR TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES |
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TOPINTRODUCTIONQUALITY COSTSSUPPORTING THE INTELLECTUAL...COMMITMENT FOR TECHNOLOGY...REFERENCES |
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Government investment in creative technological development and in enhanced shared instrumentation and resource laboratory programs will allow researchers improved access to essential technologies and encourage additional investment by research institutions.
The success of shared resources requires long-term investment and commitment.
What special commitments are needed?
To have successful core laboratories and research infrastructure,
academic institutions must invest in resource scientists, instruments,
operational budgets, and space. These are listed in the order of
priority (see Table 1
). Instruments are important, but qualified people
are required to operate them and perform the complex scientific work
lest equipment remain underutilized or new experimental approaches be
poorly implemented. Once the technical and intellectual components are
taken care of, adequate supplies and space are more easily identified.
Academic institutions must make shared resources a top priority not only to create them, but also to sustain them.
Harmful policies
Overemphasis on cost savings instead of research excellence and
productivity is the policy that most damages resource laboratories. It
is surprising that even government agencies with strong commitments to
research technologies and the research centers they fund have local
ad hoc policies that contradict their own philosophies.
Perhaps overinterpretation of guidelines by both agency and academic
administrators and accountants has led to these unintended
consequences.
A recent Life Sciences Forum article in this journal briefly described the frequent deterioration of infrastructure and the neglect of this infrastructure by deans (7) . This report also decried the lack of faculty involvement in long-range planning. Repairing this rupture between faculty and administration when it exists may be the first step in revitalizing research infrastructure. Divisive or selfish faculty behavior can also create an environment in which academic administrations choose to emphasize other priorities, perceiving their faculty as not being committed to the development of research technology laboratories.
When shared resources are not set as a priority and high-cost recovery is demanded of them, these laboratories will struggle. As a consequence, science will suffer.
Helpful policies
Scientific excellence and fiscal responsibility are not competing
goals. Investment in resources brings returns in research funding,
recognition, and scientific breakthroughs. When funds are not limiting,
finding support is simply a matter of recognizing and placing priority
on the needed technological infrastructure. When financial constraints
exist, planning and cooperation are important for implementing what is
currently possible and defining strategies to meet future needs.
Support of resource technologies is a means to invest in all faculty
research programs.
Identifying support for resource scientists is important. Finding such support minimizes cost recovery fees and provides time for the complex of activities that underlie effective shared resources. Those responsible for state- or federal government-supported laboratories should be encouraged to seek line-item salaries in their government's budget. Small universities or research institutes with highly focused core laboratories may simply share the costs up front among a set of investigators. Center and program grants can often pay portions of salaries for personnel who support the aims of their research programs. Establishing an endowment fund for resource technologies is another mechanism for upgrading instrumentation or supporting salaries (2) . The work of highly technical shared resource laboratories that contribute to the research efforts of many programs can be very appealing to donors as a long-lasting and clearly identifiable tribute.
Institutional funds can provide some flexibility in keeping technologies up to date. However, these funds may be scarce in smaller institutions or those with small endowments. Biomedical research support grants are no longer supported by the NIH, but a limited number are funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Several groups are seeking reestablishment of the controversial NIH BRS grants, which at their best provided flexible monies to support research goals of the whole institution. Should they be reinstated, it is suggested that they be peer-reviewed grants with periodic review and accountability. These could include not only start-up funds for new investigators and bridge funds for more senior scientists, but funds for partial support of salaries and instrument upgrades for resource laboratories.
Funding agencies are partners in supporting resource technologies. The shared instrumentation grant programs have had great impact, providing state-of-the-art instruments to research institutions (8) . After years of diminishing budgets, these programs show promise of renewed support. There is a great unmet need for shared instruments by national resource laboratories (P41) and by large and small academic institutions alike (9) . Dramatic increases in shared instrument grants are required to provide broad-based support of American science. Furthermore, setting up and implementing the new research made possible by such instruments is far from trivial. Peer-reviewed funding for advanced instruments should include support for at least a portion of the salary of the experienced person who will interface the new technology with the institution's research programs. Direct peer-reviewed funding for resource laboratories should be evaluated as a mechanism for supporting the nation's basic research enterprise. Improvement in coordinated planning and funding for research and development of emerging technologies is critical.
The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, a coalition of 57,000 scientists in 17 corporate and affiliate societies, recognizes the importance of research infrastructure as a funding priority (10) . The Association for Biomolecular Resource Facilities, which the authors of this article represent, is working to increase awareness that advanced technology development and shared resources are important priorities linked to the future of biomedical research.
Despite all these mechanisms for funding resource facilities from extramural sources, however, the first line of commitment must come from an institutional guarantee that their functions will not be compromised in the name of cost recovery.
CONCLUSIONS
Maintaining access to advanced technologies through support of the
resource laboratories that provide these services is too important an
issue for academic institutions to ignore. In this age of
biotechnology, institutions that do not foster the abilities of their
resource laboratories to provide cutting-edge equipment, applications,
and intellectual infrastructure will suffer in the quality of their
research output and in their ability to attract research support.
Shared resources are essential, but costly, and require adequate
support for capital equipment and personnel. Table 4
proposes individual responsibilities in achieving the goal of
assured access to advanced technologies for modern biomedical research.
New creative mechanisms for resource technology support can be found
with the joint effort of all concerned. If academic institutions,
scientists, and funding agencies regard these facilities as important,
are committed to their continued success, set them as a priority, and
share the financial burden, the value of these resource facilities and
the advice and services they provide will be greatly enhanced as we
enter a new period of growth and development in research in the
biosciences and medicine.
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Note added in proof: After this article was accepted, the NIH issued program announcements both in training (PA-99-028) and faculty development (PA-99-022) for `genome scientists', embracing a broad category of disciplines.
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FOOTNOTES |
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1 The six authors of this paper formed the 1998
Executive Board of the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities.
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REFERENCES |
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TOPINTRODUCTIONQUALITY COSTSSUPPORTING THE INTELLECTUAL...COMMITMENT FOR TECHNOLOGY...REFERENCES |
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