Giacomo Mancini (00:09):
Hi, I'm Giacomo Manzini and welcome to research 2030 and Elsevier podcast series in which our guests experts discuss debate and dissect the complex topics faced by research institutions today. And welcome to our latest episode until recently, whenever talk turned to industry and university collaboration, researchers generally fell into one of two camps. There were the supporters who extolled the much needed funding equipment or knowledge their industry partners brought to the relationship. And then there were the critics who shared stories of suppressed publications or intellectual property tussles, but that is changing with public spending under increased pressure. Some believed the future of institutional R and D funding lies in industry. Others feel that the complex societal issues we face today can only be solved by industry and academia, pooling their considerable expertise and resources and into the mix. The fact that many governments want to see universities build more third-party partnerships, and it's clear that these collaborations have a crucial role to play, but what exactly are the benefits they bring? Do industries, priorities, clash with academia's. And are there any points universities should consider before signing on the dotted line? Today's guest GlaxoSmithKline's director of academic liaison knock I'm single has more than 20 years experience working on these collaborations, joined Elsevier as vice president of academic relations, Leslie Thompson, as they explored these questions together, by the way, you'll hear a few acronyms and technical terms used during today's episode. Our show notes contain a brief glossary.
Lesley Thomson (01:49):
Well, hi, Malcolm, it's a delight to have you here today. Thank you very much for agreeing to take part in this podcast. Maybe we could start by you telling the audience a little bit about the role you have in GSK and how it's changed over the years. It's good to, good to be invited. Thank you very much. Yeah. Well, I worked for Glaxo global heritage companies for all of my working life. I currently look off on director of academic liaison. I'm going to call for team she's split across Philadelphia in Stevenage, where I work in non COVID times. For the first half of my career, I was a neuroscientist solves collaborating with a lot of different universities around the world. So I got to a stage in my career where I knew I was going to win a Nobel prize and I needed to do something else.
Malcolm Skingle (02:41):
And I look for other jobs and almost kind of by chance into this academic liaison job will have to say, they'll absolutely love it. And it used to be men half a secretary, 20 odd years ago. Now a team of 10, we do about 600 agreements per year. And we only work with good Motiva ITD, interesting people. So absolutely love my job. So given that you do collect academic liaison at GSK, you must have lots of researchers already at GSK. Why do you work in the outside world? I think we have got lots of excellent world-leading scientists in the organization like cross poll of R and D. We've got slightly more than 12,000 to R and D scientists at the moment. But what we actually tapping into the academic base is the luxury thing in academic and working on things that are tangential to the science that we're doing, not absolutely pivotal.
Malcolm Skingle (03:44):
Otherwise we would probably do that in house, but it actually amplifies what we're doing. It gives us the confidence in external research to actually spend more money internally on the research that we want to want to undertake. I mean, last year I think we spent an excessive 4.6 billion one hour a day. That's not a trivial amount of money. But the actual research that we do in house, he's quite a small part of the total science that we have to tap into to get new medicines into man. So I can see the benefit to GSK. What benefits are there to the academic community from working with GSK? Well, that's a really good question. I mean, it's always good to work with a new academic for the first time, because actually I often say that sometimes it takes me a while to get them to work with us for the first time, but it never takes me very long the second time, because like I say, the non-financial benefits of working with us, so access to intellectual input and direction for a start often access to proprietary molecules and that help them test their hypotheses and drive the science forward sometimes when I'm very selective molecules or biologics, which can absolutely accelerate their research.
Malcolm Skingle (05:05):
Sometimes we will have platform technologies that are otherwise available in the academic space. And that goes both ways. I should say. Sometimes they will have technology that we need to tap into. So I certainly not just the, just the funding that's for sure. And given you, and I have worked together in this space of collaborative research for many years, I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about how you see projects versus relationships that you build with universities and with researchers across show? Well, I, I see this very much as a continuum. So we have, there's a school of thought in some companies and some corporates that they need fewer larger collaborations actually that I don't share that view. I think we obviously do need large collaborations for the critical mass. Also, we've got some Singleton post-doctorate relationships where even student check type relationships where there is information and knowledge that is generated that is of value to our in-house in-house project, right?
Malcolm Skingle (06:13):
I mean, we had large or small all of those programs contribute and help underpin our in-house research. I, like I say, it gives us the confidence then to invest in new areas. And that might be drug targets or in data platform technologies or, you know, the latest thing in Vogue obviously is artificial intelligence and machine learning. And we're having to acquire new skills in-house ourselves. Or if you look at the whole plethora of activities, like I said, you know, my group do about 600 agreements a year. Now, some of those old, very lowly student chips you know, very small or very little funding, some, all five to 10 million for the year going up to the largest ones, but they all add value. And it's very different depending on which country you're looking at. Like I say, my, my role is I need international role change in the U S I was looking at some stats the other day.
Malcolm Skingle (07:13):
We've currently got research collaborations in more than 30 countries. Now we'll see the UK and the U S we're very large and strong sites bases for us. So for example, in the UK, we've got 290 so-called cases across multiple areas of research. And the great thing about [inaudible] everyone's right, the academic get something from it because they get new contacts and access to new people and new technology and industry, and also direction. The student gets pretty much a three to 12 month job interview, if that's what they want to do. And of course we access, they'll actually thinking scientists and science, which then helps form partly chicks or research. So you have at one end, and then at the other end, we've got things like we did a deal in summer of 2019. We, Jennifer Doudna, who is, you know, went on last year to get the Nobel prize to a next generation CRISPR. Well, that, that contract is a five-year contract and it's worth up to $67 million. And that's a completely other end of the spectrum. So there, we've got two dozen academic researchers working alongside up to 14 full-time tsk employees absolutely mingling themselves in their science. I'm, that's, that's the biggest one we have at the moment, but we've had over the last 20 odd years, we've had several boats that have certainly been 25 million over five years with several academic institutions.
Lesley Thomson (08:55):
And I first came across you when I worked with funder. So in thinking about the relationship that GSK has with the academic community, can you talk about, about where you see a role for funders in that relationship or it's there is a role for funders? Well, fund is working with funders is probably the biggest part of my job personally because what the fund does, it's, it goes both ways. So what we do for the funders, what they do for us is the risks of the project, because we, we both take and we both hate our bets and we both contribute to, to the generation of some science. I think the other thing is that when you've got world-leading scientists in your organization, like we have, I think that actually, we also add credibility to the process. And certainly the funders, when you, when you were working with the research council, you know, to have the batch of the research council, co-funding something with, I taught blue chip company that also attracts people into the area because they know that we both kick the tires if the proposed science is worth, worth doing.
Malcolm Skingle (10:10):
And I think the other thing, when I think about how middle I I'm probably Ryan I'll be incredibly well networked, but I'm always introduced to new academic partners, nip them, people, white people from funding agencies. And that's, while I try and work across as many funding agencies as I can in as many countries as we can, because I always have something to offer. And then I want you to just illustrate that by, and I'm going to take you back in time. You were quite instrumental in positioning the UK to working combi cam, can you just tell our listeners your, your role in taking the UK forward in combi temp?
Malcolm Skingle (10:52):
Yeah, I'm not easy. I love the story and it was grown out of naivety on Michael. So this was over 20 years ago when the pharmaceutical industry was trying to make chemically diverse molecules. And we thought that covenant tutorial chemistry was going to be the answer to our prayers. In actual fact, it didn't turn out the baseline, but we didn't know that at the time. Because I was the new kid on the block and I didn't actually know what the rules were. I talked my management into stumping up a reasonably significant amount of cash. And then I went down to one of the research councils, the engineering and physical sciences research council to talk to their management and their chief executive that going homes with this sort of program to encourage more more academics to think about combinatorial chemistry, but what I'd done before that which I relate to relay to them was I had actually, I knew that if I got a whole room full of academics and industry people, there'd be a lot of talk, but not much would happen as a consequence very quickly.
Malcolm Skingle (11:55):
So as he pulled all the industrial paper together, told them what I was attempting to do from all different companies, not just from my own company. And I said, what we were attempting to achieve, and everybody agreed that we hadn't got enough skills in the spice and the technology was moving quicker. We haven't gotten the paper to keep up with it. And so I gave them all a blank sheet of paper to pencil and all sorts of jot down the three names that came to mind in the United Kingdom. And one night came up consistently. They had the times at Southampton, I was a chat group, professor Mark Bradley. And so based on everybody, all the industrial people thinking this was a good guy, I thought he would make a good champion for it. And then we work with him having dealt with the engineering and physical sciences research council to actually put a program together, which absolutely moved the air of science on very, very quickly.
Malcolm Skingle (12:47):
So we had worked all, but we did a deal with the equipment manufacturers and we put it out to tender so that we got state of the art kit for universities, so that when the postdocs and post grade students who worked for that kit, when they'd finished their training on it, they were then using the same equipment that we were using. Industry academia had fallen a little bit behind. We also leveraged massively on the industry funding to get research council funding and other funding actually to actually drive the area of science. We were getting as a collective through open and transparent communication. I didn't move far quicker than I thought initially. I mean, consortium, wasn't really the thing of the day. And people were a little bit wary initially. I think it took probably about a year to 18 months to get something like 14 companies together, chipping in.
Malcolm Skingle (13:40):
And we were all de-risking each other's projects because we were all contributing to a science space that we wanted to tap into because he was pre-competitive. So, yeah, that, that worked very well. And in the 20 years we've worked in your role. Now, I wonder if you would like to just describe the change you've seen in academia in thinking, working with industry is meeting short term commercial goals that are not scientifically challenging. Wow. How many of these two can change over the last couple of decades? I mean, I was saying to someone the other day about how it used to Tom, you go shave with a university. You might over the telephone, you follow up with a fax with a, with a draft agreement, and then two weeks later you might be lucky enough to get another fax coming back in the opposite direction.
Malcolm Skingle (14:28):
They take you six months. It was something in place. Well, nowadays of course, you know, you send your draft particularly just in the U S then while you're asleep that they're working on it. You've got it back the next day. She used a course on negotiation, the program. But when I think about the level of connectivity, I mean, even if you just look at the advances of the last 18 months in COVID and how so human and all the other platforms have come on, and now we're working in a completely different why I'm going to biggest belief, how we used to work say 20 years ago. I mean, the other major differences that the impact agenda has absolutely been driven by the research councils in the UK pathway pathways for impact agenda, but also of course, the ref impact agenda. So that now means that some of the core funding that academics get is related to how successful they've been absolutely shining impact of their science.
Malcolm Skingle (15:24):
Now, the last thing anybody in industry wants is for everybody to work on lights, phage science, we don't want that is actually academics. Aren't very good at that. We're much better than that. And if we want to do that sort of work, frankly, we'd go to a CRO. Who's more likely to finish on budget and on time, but we do at least want the academics to think when they take public purse funding as a tax file, that alone someone who's got my job, they should at least think about the potential impact of what they're doing. And they should know what they're aiming at. And it might be that actually so early, there isn't any impact, but at least they would've thought about it. I'm very proud and pleased to say that GlaxoSmithKline was selected in 152 case studies in the last ref, which was significantly more than the next company down, which I think had 112, which was rolls Royce.
Malcolm Skingle (16:16):
And then it was I think it was Isaiah and Pfizer. And then there was a long tail that swept July. Well, I think people get it now. I will go to universities now to talk to her or get on the phone, to talk with people and other companies have been there. Actually, the companies weren't interested before. So I think more companies are better. We always collaborate with people for as long as I can remember. I think other companies have certainly called up now. I knew we're in a competitive situation. I think that competition is healthy, but for the whole interplay stage, she see that interest in the impact agenda being more prominent around the rest of the world, given your global role. So you have countries who are looking for niche areas of science that are going to drive the agenda.
Malcolm Skingle (17:12):
So here I'm thinking of ADB, Singapore, for example fall, you know, drive in certain air size quickly, almost acting like the biotech of countries United site. So I would say, I would say to change in more recent years, because it was always more difficult to do collaborations in the U S because frankly, the academics were less hungry. So they probably had access to a broader range of funds. And sometimes it was decimal point difference in the amount of funding that they would receive. I think that's changing. I think that's getting harder. The budgets get flat. The great thing about the United Kingdom is that you can pick the phone up to the chief execs or any of the research charities or research council. In fact, my first quarter of the day, it was the chief executive, one of the UK research councils, because I will say, well, our agenda is to Amar out with her agenda and we'll look for where there's synergies and it won't be seen as manipulating public purse funding.
Malcolm Skingle (18:20):
It'd be seen as leveraging on each other to actually drive the science forward. I mean, they're a niche, you know, you've got investing Denmark, you've got translation island. There's always good stuff you can pick off from, from other places. I feel sorry for young people now who can't network face to face cause of COVID. But I think that if you've always been, if you are well networked and you've always been fair with people, people want to work with you and together, you know, we can, we can do good things. I pride myself on having that Asian memory where you forget the names of people and what you've done with them. But I do know that I would never have done anything which would have not driven to help drive their size for whatever possible. I think there's value in that framing because you got reputation and people want to work with that's very helpful Malcolm.
Lesley Thomson (19:18):
And I think, I would say certainly amongst the UK, you are seen very much as a trusted partner with the academic community and the funders. So I going to take you onto a report. The LCFF published in 2019, which was researched futures, drivers, and scenarios for the next decade, in that we included some quotes from key industry and academic figures. I'd love to get your thoughts on a couple of them. So I think they address some of the issues we've talked about today. So one funder said increased competition among institutions for funding, for funding sources, forces them to pursue collaborations with industry, which goes against open science. Do you think what you do in GSK goes against open science for sharing best practice obviously has to be within reason. You know, not trying to give something, somebody access to something you just the pattern or they just had to commercialize it because we show medicines, which we're trying to get medicines from.
Malcolm Skingle (20:29):
Okay. but certainly on everything else we want the best of the best. And we want to share with the mess. One thing that's always struck me is how academics don't share their industrial contacts. With other academics, if I go out and I see something new I come in and I tell all of our people because I want as many people to increase that user point for it. And similarly, actually, you know, I chair one of our trade association groups, one of our strategic leadership groups on academic collaboration, education and skills, and I will body something good, frankly, I got until the other companies about what now, because I want them to want to, because I think that if it's more than just one company or one person saying it is more likely to increase funding into a specific area. But yeah, quite surprised me.
Malcolm Skingle (21:24):
It came home to me when we had what I've asked scientists went to a UK university with whom he'd collaborated for many years. And we had this situation where to break down barriers, even further. We actually embedded people in the university department and often about three to six months, this guy came back to save. And as we were having a conversation about it, and he said, he couldn't believe how the I teacher you to change. So his collaborators and asteroid was competition because they were fishing in the same ground funding pool I'm that never ever occurred to me. I'd always, well, let's make sure the projects results properly have reached and make sure it's not under-resourced and work together to get the, to get the outcomes, academics, fun thing like that. I all driven by the competition. The research councils have on occasion done excellent things where they've got not many different disciplines working together, but different universities working together and cross an excellent examples again, in ESL SLC spice actually, or web has happened.
Malcolm Skingle (22:30):
BBSRC, I've got knowledge, Lotus APS, LLC. I've got their interdisciplinary research centers. I'm really good things come from that. When you have people from different disciplines we've got one recently a prosperity partnership, which was with Strathclyde and Nottingham university with medicinal chemists who traditionally think about yields, think about their family roots, think about case and wounds. And I'm thinking about my jokes and what we were trying to do is to change the culture a little bit and get them to think about in silico design and modeling more using data visualization techniques and artificial intelligence. So we wanted them to work with our respective ICT departments as well, being in a real way, not just tokenism and it takes a while to change culture. And it was also to put people in house, you know, within GSK, because to get at chemist thinking more about, have I ever worked with that data scientist and it takes a while to get there.
Malcolm Skingle (23:33):
And I brought it here at peer review when he went to the academics to peer review it. I said that like, I see a great relationship between GSK and calcium and [inaudible] and Strathclyde, but not between the two universities, but the whole point of us driving that was to get that communication between those two universities. So it's like the best bits from both universities to drive the science forward. And so, so yeah, I, again, I think you just need to be open and transparent as to what your objectives don't when you're negotiating mess about talking about the things that back on agreement that no one really cares about. Talk about the key things, what your interests are, and if you're in alignment, move with heist, and if you're not shake hands and say, well, we'll try again in another time with another project, but just don't waste time on it.
Lesley Thomson (24:23):
So you've described your generosity with your networks. One of the things I would observe is how important it is when you're an early career researcher, either in industry or in academia to build your networks. How do you support people that you're nurturing to S to build their networks? I absolutely think that you should help young people figure in COVID times when they, when they can't network. So I will allow any young person access to my networks and put a good word into to help them. I think in non-compete times, I mean, anything where there's people exchange always does much because people make their own mind. Now, you know, we all marginalized people that we respect less and we all try and build relationships with people. And while we enjoy being with them, we respect and to when they can help us do things.
Lesley Thomson (25:23):
I think from sandwich students through to caesarians, to, to visiting lecturers, visiting chairs, and that's in both directions, they always result in either job or collaboration opportunities. I'm I always, they use them out to new friendships. And we actively put our senior, some of our senior scientists into the academic base because we want them one to be able to help influence the curriculum so that it's fit for purpose and modern guy too, because we want to look for potential recruits three. We want to see what research is going on and where we should be investing research dollars and research pounds as we, as we move forward. We also want to portray to those people that we publish, there's this myth that we don't publish and a view and all that I've discussed on several occasions. We, we do publish world-leading science in, in the most red high impact journals.
Malcolm Skingle (26:25):
And that attracts bright young people, right? Attracts people full stop, but suddenly the young people are impressed by that. We've got good resources, we've got good career progression pathways. You know, why would you not want to work with, or work for a company that's trying to do the right and take medicines all the way, all the way through to your clinic. So, oh, how many ACI? I mentor a lot of people. It's funny, you know, somebody said to me, 20 years ago, I'll be mentoring people, but actually all of the mistakes that I've made over the years, you won't be able to reproduce. And you want people to get as far in our mind as possible, as quickly as possible.
Lesley Thomson (27:08):
So taking all that experience, and I know it's not the other side of the fence because you're in collaborations and it's a joint asset, but if you were in a university, what do you think they should be thinking about before they say yes to a collaboration with any company and what kind of due diligence should they do? Yeah, that's a great question as well, because some call from the academic is done, do due diligence. They, they want to take the money to box the, the, the activity on the ground funding coming in, but you should absolutely do your due diligence. I mean, when I think about the number of people we have on the diligence team, when we're acquiring a technology or a molecule, or sometimes even a small company you know, you've, you've absolutely got to kick the tires of that. And I want the academics should do a minimum is where one might show that the company's interested in the research area that you're trying to push, because you need to know which disease sites, which are science that are internal more, the philosophy of the company is, and you can do that simply by doing a bit of geometric analysis, having a look at the publications, saying who the key people are seeing if they've spoken at a conference you know, perhaps catching up on some of their talks.
Malcolm Skingle (28:32):
It's absolutely important. I think to check out the annual retool to say what the track record is also of the company and exploiting technology. And you can tell a lot about organization by who they collaborate with. Good people collaborate with other good people, and you can see the error of science, what they're into. So you should do all that homework actually before you even come to industry. And then the other thing of course, is you, we've all seen these proposals that come in and they're so unwieldy, long convoluted, and sometimes academics hate to their bet. So you don't even know you finish reading it. You're not sure really what they're after, or even sometimes with week three. So being succinct, something, which if it comes to a person a lot, man, I ping it to a senior person because it's only a page or two. I know it's going to get read. Whereas if it's 30 pages it's going to go into [inaudible] [inaudible] I think just like you to reflect on what you think would COVID pandemic has talked it's about collaboration.
Malcolm Skingle (29:46):
I think the, the the COVID pandemic has sold us out to community Catlin communicate better about our teams. That's for sure. You know, from interviews to sought things, working together, even to report writing as a collective. I mean, these were things that, you know, I would say two years ago, we didn't do, or certainly didn't do them very well. But we certainly do it now at all. I think that there will be obviously a hybrid model of MuleSoft going back to our labs and offices, and hopefully we'll get to keep the best bits of, of what we've learned in lockdown.
Lesley Thomson (30:26):
Okay. And then final question from me before I bring it to a close. If you think about your younger self, when you were moving from working at the bench to moving into running academic partnerships for GSK, what advice would you give yourself? Well, I can say you know, I've enjoyed, I love my life as a research scientist and running a research group. I really did, but I also love this job. And what I liked about it was the autonomy with diversity. So I think my advice would be, don't be frightened of Mike, him spikes because you know, everything is in an SOP or in a manual. We all make dislikes, but Mike, the same, a slight twice, I would say, trust your gut. You know, often you can talk to different people and you will get a feel for something as to whether it's going to be a flier at all, but ensure that your decisions are all based on data and evidence.
Malcolm Skingle (31:32):
And, you know, you actually got something to back your guts up. And then finally, I would say surround yourself with people that you trust and like, and respect because if you do that and some, sometimes you're not in a position to do that, but the most part, he generally you all, because like I say, you strengthen existing relationships are fruitful when you marginalize others. But if you do that, actually you'll push your projects quicker and you'll have stronger friendships. You'll gain more trust. It's very wise advice. Malcolm, it's been really, really tapping into your experience and your wisdom. And I'd just like to say on behalf of everyone, listened to this, thanks for what you've told us. And I hope what you've said will help and inspire others to think about academic corporate collaborations. Thank you.
Giacomo Mancini (32:26):
When we talk about university industry collaborations, often the focus is on the rewards reaped by researchers and their institutions. There are many as Malcolm is quick to point out for new funding pots to expand the, but it's fascinating to hear how much industry benefits from these relationships. Malcolm sees these partnerships as an opportunity to tap into the brains of laterally thinking academics whose work can amplify GSKs importantly, they give GSK the confidence to invest more money in in-house R and D. Malcolm is also quite Frank about how unprepared many institutions are when they approach potential industry partners like GSK from prioritizing due diligence to drafting proposals. He shares some valuable, best practice tips for institutions, and he does a great job of busting some of the historical myths associated with these partnerships, particularly claims that industry is anti transparency and openness. We want to thank Malcolm Skinkle for sharing his knowledge with us here on research 2030 and Leslie Thompson for hosting this episode. If you have questions or comments to share with us about this episode or the podcast in general, we would love to hear them send us an email@researchtwentythirtyatelsevier.com. That's research 20 thirty@elsevier.com. Again, a moment Sini, and thank you for listening to this episode of research 2030, and please don't forget to sign up through research 2030 on your favorite podcast provider. That will, you'll be the first to hear about new episodes.
Hi, I'm Giacomo Manzini and welcome to research 2030 and Elsevier podcast series in which our guests experts discuss debate and dissect the complex topics faced by research institutions today. And welcome to our latest episode until recently, whenever talk turned to industry and university collaboration, researchers generally fell into one of two camps. There were the supporters who extolled the much needed funding equipment or knowledge their industry partners brought to the relationship. And then there were the critics who shared stories of suppressed publications or intellectual property tussles, but that is changing with public spending under increased pressure. Some believed the future of institutional R and D funding lies in industry. Others feel that the complex societal issues we face today can only be solved by industry and academia, pooling their considerable expertise and resources and into the mix. The fact that many governments want to see universities build more third-party partnerships, and it's clear that these collaborations have a crucial role to play, but what exactly are the benefits they bring? Do industries, priorities, clash with academia's. And are there any points universities should consider before signing on the dotted line? Today's guest GlaxoSmithKline's director of academic liaison knock I'm single has more than 20 years experience working on these collaborations, joined Elsevier as vice president of academic relations, Leslie Thompson, as they explored these questions together, by the way, you'll hear a few acronyms and technical terms used during today's episode. Our show notes contain a brief glossary.
Lesley Thomson (01:49):
Well, hi, Malcolm, it's a delight to have you here today. Thank you very much for agreeing to take part in this podcast. Maybe we could start by you telling the audience a little bit about the role you have in GSK and how it's changed over the years. It's good to, good to be invited. Thank you very much. Yeah. Well, I worked for Glaxo global heritage companies for all of my working life. I currently look off on director of academic liaison. I'm going to call for team she's split across Philadelphia in Stevenage, where I work in non COVID times. For the first half of my career, I was a neuroscientist solves collaborating with a lot of different universities around the world. So I got to a stage in my career where I knew I was going to win a Nobel prize and I needed to do something else.
Malcolm Skingle (02:41):
And I look for other jobs and almost kind of by chance into this academic liaison job will have to say, they'll absolutely love it. And it used to be men half a secretary, 20 odd years ago. Now a team of 10, we do about 600 agreements per year. And we only work with good Motiva ITD, interesting people. So absolutely love my job. So given that you do collect academic liaison at GSK, you must have lots of researchers already at GSK. Why do you work in the outside world? I think we have got lots of excellent world-leading scientists in the organization like cross poll of R and D. We've got slightly more than 12,000 to R and D scientists at the moment. But what we actually tapping into the academic base is the luxury thing in academic and working on things that are tangential to the science that we're doing, not absolutely pivotal.
Malcolm Skingle (03:44):
Otherwise we would probably do that in house, but it actually amplifies what we're doing. It gives us the confidence in external research to actually spend more money internally on the research that we want to want to undertake. I mean, last year I think we spent an excessive 4.6 billion one hour a day. That's not a trivial amount of money. But the actual research that we do in house, he's quite a small part of the total science that we have to tap into to get new medicines into man. So I can see the benefit to GSK. What benefits are there to the academic community from working with GSK? Well, that's a really good question. I mean, it's always good to work with a new academic for the first time, because actually I often say that sometimes it takes me a while to get them to work with us for the first time, but it never takes me very long the second time, because like I say, the non-financial benefits of working with us, so access to intellectual input and direction for a start often access to proprietary molecules and that help them test their hypotheses and drive the science forward sometimes when I'm very selective molecules or biologics, which can absolutely accelerate their research.
Malcolm Skingle (05:05):
Sometimes we will have platform technologies that are otherwise available in the academic space. And that goes both ways. I should say. Sometimes they will have technology that we need to tap into. So I certainly not just the, just the funding that's for sure. And given you, and I have worked together in this space of collaborative research for many years, I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about how you see projects versus relationships that you build with universities and with researchers across show? Well, I, I see this very much as a continuum. So we have, there's a school of thought in some companies and some corporates that they need fewer larger collaborations actually that I don't share that view. I think we obviously do need large collaborations for the critical mass. Also, we've got some Singleton post-doctorate relationships where even student check type relationships where there is information and knowledge that is generated that is of value to our in-house in-house project, right?
Malcolm Skingle (06:13):
I mean, we had large or small all of those programs contribute and help underpin our in-house research. I, like I say, it gives us the confidence then to invest in new areas. And that might be drug targets or in data platform technologies or, you know, the latest thing in Vogue obviously is artificial intelligence and machine learning. And we're having to acquire new skills in-house ourselves. Or if you look at the whole plethora of activities, like I said, you know, my group do about 600 agreements a year. Now, some of those old, very lowly student chips you know, very small or very little funding, some, all five to 10 million for the year going up to the largest ones, but they all add value. And it's very different depending on which country you're looking at. Like I say, my, my role is I need international role change in the U S I was looking at some stats the other day.
Malcolm Skingle (07:13):
We've currently got research collaborations in more than 30 countries. Now we'll see the UK and the U S we're very large and strong sites bases for us. So for example, in the UK, we've got 290 so-called cases across multiple areas of research. And the great thing about [inaudible] everyone's right, the academic get something from it because they get new contacts and access to new people and new technology and industry, and also direction. The student gets pretty much a three to 12 month job interview, if that's what they want to do. And of course we access, they'll actually thinking scientists and science, which then helps form partly chicks or research. So you have at one end, and then at the other end, we've got things like we did a deal in summer of 2019. We, Jennifer Doudna, who is, you know, went on last year to get the Nobel prize to a next generation CRISPR. Well, that, that contract is a five-year contract and it's worth up to $67 million. And that's a completely other end of the spectrum. So there, we've got two dozen academic researchers working alongside up to 14 full-time tsk employees absolutely mingling themselves in their science. I'm, that's, that's the biggest one we have at the moment, but we've had over the last 20 odd years, we've had several boats that have certainly been 25 million over five years with several academic institutions.
Lesley Thomson (08:55):
And I first came across you when I worked with funder. So in thinking about the relationship that GSK has with the academic community, can you talk about, about where you see a role for funders in that relationship or it's there is a role for funders? Well, fund is working with funders is probably the biggest part of my job personally because what the fund does, it's, it goes both ways. So what we do for the funders, what they do for us is the risks of the project, because we, we both take and we both hate our bets and we both contribute to, to the generation of some science. I think the other thing is that when you've got world-leading scientists in your organization, like we have, I think that actually, we also add credibility to the process. And certainly the funders, when you, when you were working with the research council, you know, to have the batch of the research council, co-funding something with, I taught blue chip company that also attracts people into the area because they know that we both kick the tires if the proposed science is worth, worth doing.
Malcolm Skingle (10:10):
And I think the other thing, when I think about how middle I I'm probably Ryan I'll be incredibly well networked, but I'm always introduced to new academic partners, nip them, people, white people from funding agencies. And that's, while I try and work across as many funding agencies as I can in as many countries as we can, because I always have something to offer. And then I want you to just illustrate that by, and I'm going to take you back in time. You were quite instrumental in positioning the UK to working combi cam, can you just tell our listeners your, your role in taking the UK forward in combi temp?
Malcolm Skingle (10:52):
Yeah, I'm not easy. I love the story and it was grown out of naivety on Michael. So this was over 20 years ago when the pharmaceutical industry was trying to make chemically diverse molecules. And we thought that covenant tutorial chemistry was going to be the answer to our prayers. In actual fact, it didn't turn out the baseline, but we didn't know that at the time. Because I was the new kid on the block and I didn't actually know what the rules were. I talked my management into stumping up a reasonably significant amount of cash. And then I went down to one of the research councils, the engineering and physical sciences research council to talk to their management and their chief executive that going homes with this sort of program to encourage more more academics to think about combinatorial chemistry, but what I'd done before that which I relate to relay to them was I had actually, I knew that if I got a whole room full of academics and industry people, there'd be a lot of talk, but not much would happen as a consequence very quickly.
Malcolm Skingle (11:55):
So as he pulled all the industrial paper together, told them what I was attempting to do from all different companies, not just from my own company. And I said, what we were attempting to achieve, and everybody agreed that we hadn't got enough skills in the spice and the technology was moving quicker. We haven't gotten the paper to keep up with it. And so I gave them all a blank sheet of paper to pencil and all sorts of jot down the three names that came to mind in the United Kingdom. And one night came up consistently. They had the times at Southampton, I was a chat group, professor Mark Bradley. And so based on everybody, all the industrial people thinking this was a good guy, I thought he would make a good champion for it. And then we work with him having dealt with the engineering and physical sciences research council to actually put a program together, which absolutely moved the air of science on very, very quickly.
Malcolm Skingle (12:47):
So we had worked all, but we did a deal with the equipment manufacturers and we put it out to tender so that we got state of the art kit for universities, so that when the postdocs and post grade students who worked for that kit, when they'd finished their training on it, they were then using the same equipment that we were using. Industry academia had fallen a little bit behind. We also leveraged massively on the industry funding to get research council funding and other funding actually to actually drive the area of science. We were getting as a collective through open and transparent communication. I didn't move far quicker than I thought initially. I mean, consortium, wasn't really the thing of the day. And people were a little bit wary initially. I think it took probably about a year to 18 months to get something like 14 companies together, chipping in.
Malcolm Skingle (13:40):
And we were all de-risking each other's projects because we were all contributing to a science space that we wanted to tap into because he was pre-competitive. So, yeah, that, that worked very well. And in the 20 years we've worked in your role. Now, I wonder if you would like to just describe the change you've seen in academia in thinking, working with industry is meeting short term commercial goals that are not scientifically challenging. Wow. How many of these two can change over the last couple of decades? I mean, I was saying to someone the other day about how it used to Tom, you go shave with a university. You might over the telephone, you follow up with a fax with a, with a draft agreement, and then two weeks later you might be lucky enough to get another fax coming back in the opposite direction.
Malcolm Skingle (14:28):
They take you six months. It was something in place. Well, nowadays of course, you know, you send your draft particularly just in the U S then while you're asleep that they're working on it. You've got it back the next day. She used a course on negotiation, the program. But when I think about the level of connectivity, I mean, even if you just look at the advances of the last 18 months in COVID and how so human and all the other platforms have come on, and now we're working in a completely different why I'm going to biggest belief, how we used to work say 20 years ago. I mean, the other major differences that the impact agenda has absolutely been driven by the research councils in the UK pathway pathways for impact agenda, but also of course, the ref impact agenda. So that now means that some of the core funding that academics get is related to how successful they've been absolutely shining impact of their science.
Malcolm Skingle (15:24):
Now, the last thing anybody in industry wants is for everybody to work on lights, phage science, we don't want that is actually academics. Aren't very good at that. We're much better than that. And if we want to do that sort of work, frankly, we'd go to a CRO. Who's more likely to finish on budget and on time, but we do at least want the academics to think when they take public purse funding as a tax file, that alone someone who's got my job, they should at least think about the potential impact of what they're doing. And they should know what they're aiming at. And it might be that actually so early, there isn't any impact, but at least they would've thought about it. I'm very proud and pleased to say that GlaxoSmithKline was selected in 152 case studies in the last ref, which was significantly more than the next company down, which I think had 112, which was rolls Royce.
Malcolm Skingle (16:16):
And then it was I think it was Isaiah and Pfizer. And then there was a long tail that swept July. Well, I think people get it now. I will go to universities now to talk to her or get on the phone, to talk with people and other companies have been there. Actually, the companies weren't interested before. So I think more companies are better. We always collaborate with people for as long as I can remember. I think other companies have certainly called up now. I knew we're in a competitive situation. I think that competition is healthy, but for the whole interplay stage, she see that interest in the impact agenda being more prominent around the rest of the world, given your global role. So you have countries who are looking for niche areas of science that are going to drive the agenda.
Malcolm Skingle (17:12):
So here I'm thinking of ADB, Singapore, for example fall, you know, drive in certain air size quickly, almost acting like the biotech of countries United site. So I would say, I would say to change in more recent years, because it was always more difficult to do collaborations in the U S because frankly, the academics were less hungry. So they probably had access to a broader range of funds. And sometimes it was decimal point difference in the amount of funding that they would receive. I think that's changing. I think that's getting harder. The budgets get flat. The great thing about the United Kingdom is that you can pick the phone up to the chief execs or any of the research charities or research council. In fact, my first quarter of the day, it was the chief executive, one of the UK research councils, because I will say, well, our agenda is to Amar out with her agenda and we'll look for where there's synergies and it won't be seen as manipulating public purse funding.
Malcolm Skingle (18:20):
It'd be seen as leveraging on each other to actually drive the science forward. I mean, they're a niche, you know, you've got investing Denmark, you've got translation island. There's always good stuff you can pick off from, from other places. I feel sorry for young people now who can't network face to face cause of COVID. But I think that if you've always been, if you are well networked and you've always been fair with people, people want to work with you and together, you know, we can, we can do good things. I pride myself on having that Asian memory where you forget the names of people and what you've done with them. But I do know that I would never have done anything which would have not driven to help drive their size for whatever possible. I think there's value in that framing because you got reputation and people want to work with that's very helpful Malcolm.
Lesley Thomson (19:18):
And I think, I would say certainly amongst the UK, you are seen very much as a trusted partner with the academic community and the funders. So I going to take you onto a report. The LCFF published in 2019, which was researched futures, drivers, and scenarios for the next decade, in that we included some quotes from key industry and academic figures. I'd love to get your thoughts on a couple of them. So I think they address some of the issues we've talked about today. So one funder said increased competition among institutions for funding, for funding sources, forces them to pursue collaborations with industry, which goes against open science. Do you think what you do in GSK goes against open science for sharing best practice obviously has to be within reason. You know, not trying to give something, somebody access to something you just the pattern or they just had to commercialize it because we show medicines, which we're trying to get medicines from.
Malcolm Skingle (20:29):
Okay. but certainly on everything else we want the best of the best. And we want to share with the mess. One thing that's always struck me is how academics don't share their industrial contacts. With other academics, if I go out and I see something new I come in and I tell all of our people because I want as many people to increase that user point for it. And similarly, actually, you know, I chair one of our trade association groups, one of our strategic leadership groups on academic collaboration, education and skills, and I will body something good, frankly, I got until the other companies about what now, because I want them to want to, because I think that if it's more than just one company or one person saying it is more likely to increase funding into a specific area. But yeah, quite surprised me.
Malcolm Skingle (21:24):
It came home to me when we had what I've asked scientists went to a UK university with whom he'd collaborated for many years. And we had this situation where to break down barriers, even further. We actually embedded people in the university department and often about three to six months, this guy came back to save. And as we were having a conversation about it, and he said, he couldn't believe how the I teacher you to change. So his collaborators and asteroid was competition because they were fishing in the same ground funding pool I'm that never ever occurred to me. I'd always, well, let's make sure the projects results properly have reached and make sure it's not under-resourced and work together to get the, to get the outcomes, academics, fun thing like that. I all driven by the competition. The research councils have on occasion done excellent things where they've got not many different disciplines working together, but different universities working together and cross an excellent examples again, in ESL SLC spice actually, or web has happened.
Malcolm Skingle (22:30):
BBSRC, I've got knowledge, Lotus APS, LLC. I've got their interdisciplinary research centers. I'm really good things come from that. When you have people from different disciplines we've got one recently a prosperity partnership, which was with Strathclyde and Nottingham university with medicinal chemists who traditionally think about yields, think about their family roots, think about case and wounds. And I'm thinking about my jokes and what we were trying to do is to change the culture a little bit and get them to think about in silico design and modeling more using data visualization techniques and artificial intelligence. So we wanted them to work with our respective ICT departments as well, being in a real way, not just tokenism and it takes a while to change culture. And it was also to put people in house, you know, within GSK, because to get at chemist thinking more about, have I ever worked with that data scientist and it takes a while to get there.
Malcolm Skingle (23:33):
And I brought it here at peer review when he went to the academics to peer review it. I said that like, I see a great relationship between GSK and calcium and [inaudible] and Strathclyde, but not between the two universities, but the whole point of us driving that was to get that communication between those two universities. So it's like the best bits from both universities to drive the science forward. And so, so yeah, I, again, I think you just need to be open and transparent as to what your objectives don't when you're negotiating mess about talking about the things that back on agreement that no one really cares about. Talk about the key things, what your interests are, and if you're in alignment, move with heist, and if you're not shake hands and say, well, we'll try again in another time with another project, but just don't waste time on it.
Lesley Thomson (24:23):
So you've described your generosity with your networks. One of the things I would observe is how important it is when you're an early career researcher, either in industry or in academia to build your networks. How do you support people that you're nurturing to S to build their networks? I absolutely think that you should help young people figure in COVID times when they, when they can't network. So I will allow any young person access to my networks and put a good word into to help them. I think in non-compete times, I mean, anything where there's people exchange always does much because people make their own mind. Now, you know, we all marginalized people that we respect less and we all try and build relationships with people. And while we enjoy being with them, we respect and to when they can help us do things.
Lesley Thomson (25:23):
I think from sandwich students through to caesarians, to, to visiting lecturers, visiting chairs, and that's in both directions, they always result in either job or collaboration opportunities. I'm I always, they use them out to new friendships. And we actively put our senior, some of our senior scientists into the academic base because we want them one to be able to help influence the curriculum so that it's fit for purpose and modern guy too, because we want to look for potential recruits three. We want to see what research is going on and where we should be investing research dollars and research pounds as we, as we move forward. We also want to portray to those people that we publish, there's this myth that we don't publish and a view and all that I've discussed on several occasions. We, we do publish world-leading science in, in the most red high impact journals.
Malcolm Skingle (26:25):
And that attracts bright young people, right? Attracts people full stop, but suddenly the young people are impressed by that. We've got good resources, we've got good career progression pathways. You know, why would you not want to work with, or work for a company that's trying to do the right and take medicines all the way, all the way through to your clinic. So, oh, how many ACI? I mentor a lot of people. It's funny, you know, somebody said to me, 20 years ago, I'll be mentoring people, but actually all of the mistakes that I've made over the years, you won't be able to reproduce. And you want people to get as far in our mind as possible, as quickly as possible.
Lesley Thomson (27:08):
So taking all that experience, and I know it's not the other side of the fence because you're in collaborations and it's a joint asset, but if you were in a university, what do you think they should be thinking about before they say yes to a collaboration with any company and what kind of due diligence should they do? Yeah, that's a great question as well, because some call from the academic is done, do due diligence. They, they want to take the money to box the, the, the activity on the ground funding coming in, but you should absolutely do your due diligence. I mean, when I think about the number of people we have on the diligence team, when we're acquiring a technology or a molecule, or sometimes even a small company you know, you've, you've absolutely got to kick the tires of that. And I want the academics should do a minimum is where one might show that the company's interested in the research area that you're trying to push, because you need to know which disease sites, which are science that are internal more, the philosophy of the company is, and you can do that simply by doing a bit of geometric analysis, having a look at the publications, saying who the key people are seeing if they've spoken at a conference you know, perhaps catching up on some of their talks.
Malcolm Skingle (28:32):
It's absolutely important. I think to check out the annual retool to say what the track record is also of the company and exploiting technology. And you can tell a lot about organization by who they collaborate with. Good people collaborate with other good people, and you can see the error of science, what they're into. So you should do all that homework actually before you even come to industry. And then the other thing of course, is you, we've all seen these proposals that come in and they're so unwieldy, long convoluted, and sometimes academics hate to their bet. So you don't even know you finish reading it. You're not sure really what they're after, or even sometimes with week three. So being succinct, something, which if it comes to a person a lot, man, I ping it to a senior person because it's only a page or two. I know it's going to get read. Whereas if it's 30 pages it's going to go into [inaudible] [inaudible] I think just like you to reflect on what you think would COVID pandemic has talked it's about collaboration.
Malcolm Skingle (29:46):
I think the, the the COVID pandemic has sold us out to community Catlin communicate better about our teams. That's for sure. You know, from interviews to sought things, working together, even to report writing as a collective. I mean, these were things that, you know, I would say two years ago, we didn't do, or certainly didn't do them very well. But we certainly do it now at all. I think that there will be obviously a hybrid model of MuleSoft going back to our labs and offices, and hopefully we'll get to keep the best bits of, of what we've learned in lockdown.
Lesley Thomson (30:26):
Okay. And then final question from me before I bring it to a close. If you think about your younger self, when you were moving from working at the bench to moving into running academic partnerships for GSK, what advice would you give yourself? Well, I can say you know, I've enjoyed, I love my life as a research scientist and running a research group. I really did, but I also love this job. And what I liked about it was the autonomy with diversity. So I think my advice would be, don't be frightened of Mike, him spikes because you know, everything is in an SOP or in a manual. We all make dislikes, but Mike, the same, a slight twice, I would say, trust your gut. You know, often you can talk to different people and you will get a feel for something as to whether it's going to be a flier at all, but ensure that your decisions are all based on data and evidence.
Malcolm Skingle (31:32):
And, you know, you actually got something to back your guts up. And then finally, I would say surround yourself with people that you trust and like, and respect because if you do that and some, sometimes you're not in a position to do that, but the most part, he generally you all, because like I say, you strengthen existing relationships are fruitful when you marginalize others. But if you do that, actually you'll push your projects quicker and you'll have stronger friendships. You'll gain more trust. It's very wise advice. Malcolm, it's been really, really tapping into your experience and your wisdom. And I'd just like to say on behalf of everyone, listened to this, thanks for what you've told us. And I hope what you've said will help and inspire others to think about academic corporate collaborations. Thank you.
Giacomo Mancini (32:26):
When we talk about university industry collaborations, often the focus is on the rewards reaped by researchers and their institutions. There are many as Malcolm is quick to point out for new funding pots to expand the, but it's fascinating to hear how much industry benefits from these relationships. Malcolm sees these partnerships as an opportunity to tap into the brains of laterally thinking academics whose work can amplify GSKs importantly, they give GSK the confidence to invest more money in in-house R and D. Malcolm is also quite Frank about how unprepared many institutions are when they approach potential industry partners like GSK from prioritizing due diligence to drafting proposals. He shares some valuable, best practice tips for institutions, and he does a great job of busting some of the historical myths associated with these partnerships, particularly claims that industry is anti transparency and openness. We want to thank Malcolm Skinkle for sharing his knowledge with us here on research 2030 and Leslie Thompson for hosting this episode. If you have questions or comments to share with us about this episode or the podcast in general, we would love to hear them send us an email@researchtwentythirtyatelsevier.com. That's research 20 thirty@elsevier.com. Again, a moment Sini, and thank you for listening to this episode of research 2030, and please don't forget to sign up through research 2030 on your favorite podcast provider. That will, you'll be the first to hear about new episodes.
