FERPA

There's an interesting side note in the Eagle story about the resignation of the CPI chair.

Last week, lawyers from the A&M System asked the CPI to take down from the group's Web site "proprietary documents" related to the centers that contained profit estimates and a strategic plan titled "Redefining the Biomedical Enterprise." The CPI complied.

Rod Davis, a spokesman for the A&M System, said the concerns that the system had were related only to the documents containing the proprietary information and said no pressure was put on Bell-Pedersen to step down.

"To have that posted would have been breaking the law, so our general counsel sent a letter to the CPI asking them to take it down," Davis said. "When advised, they took it down."

Some may wonder what kind of proprietary information would be in the documents about a taxpayer-funded public institution. Especially since we've been assured that there are no deals with any companies. Doesn't the public have a right to know what the strategic plan is for their tax dollars?

Well, no.

Universities have a lot of legal requirements for confidentiality under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). FERPA ensures that academic records can only be disclosed with a student's consent, event to his parents. So, even if they think they're the most unintentionally entertaining things they've ever read, the faculty aren't allowed to post a student's reports on the internet where his parents might see them and cut him off.

Resistance is futile

Another opponent of the Vision 1920 steps aside

The chair of a group representing the Texas A&M research community stepped down last week, saying in an e-mail to members that she was leaving for personal reasons and to pursue research interests.

Deborah Bell-Pedersen, whose yearlong term was scheduled to end in May, on Saturday announced in an e-mail that she was leaving her post at the Council of Principal Investigators. The group in recent weeks has been critical of the A&M System's proposed National Center for Therapeutics Manufacturing and a pair of other therapeutics-related centers.

Nancy Amato, a computer science professor, will serve as interim chair of the group. Neither Bell-Pedersen, who was out of the country, nor Amato could not be reached for comment.

Looks like the faculty are starting to understand which way the wind is blowing.

The (Virtual) stars are bright

Commenter ebrazos points out

...TIGM is co-recipient of a $3.2 million grant from the EPA.

ebrazos provides a link to the HSC website

TIGM will receive $750,000 over three years in collaboration with the University of Houston and Indiana University through a new entity called the Texas-Indiana Virtual STAR (TIVS) Center.
...
The Texas-Indiana Virtual STAR Center is designed to provide a more reliable chemical risk assessment by creating in vitro (controlled environment) screening models of mouse embryonic stem cells (TIGM) and zebrafish (at the University of Houston) for toxicity. Data from these models then will be used by Indiana University to produce predictive computer models for toxicity on processes that are also relevant in human embryonic development.

When we do something twice in Aggieland, it becomes a tradition

In today's Houston Chronicle, Loren Steffy compares the NCTM to the earlier deal with Lexicon for TIGM

Brett Giroir, A&M's vice chancellor for research, said he alone chose Introgen.

“Rick Perry had nothing to do with my interacting with Introgen,” he said. “This was strictly a decision based on there's a company right here's who's a major player in that field.”

That's similar to the argument the A&M System used in 2005 to defend its now defunct partnership with Lexicon Pharmaceuticals of The Woodlands. Had that deal succeeded, it would have benefited Lexicon's shareholders, which included several prominent Perry campaign contributors.

The precedent is arguably older than Lexicon/TIGM. Some at A&M say the Institute for Biosciences and Technology was created to support the bovine embryo research of Granada Biosciences, which was owned by former Regent David Eller. But the IBT went in other directions, and Granada wound up going under and selling their patents to a rival. The ETF and TEF provide creative new funding mechanisms that weren't available to Granada.

Pandemic alert

Loren Steffy takes shots at A&M again in the Houston Chronicle

Texas A&M's plan to develop a world-class medical research facility could use an injection of integrity.

In January, the state awarded A&M $50 million from the Emerging Technology Fund, which purports to benefit private-sector technology startups, for the National Center for Therapeutics Manufacturing, which plans to develop new vaccines.

Unfortunately, the infusion of taxpayer money is showing some disturbing symptoms that have been found in other state economic development deals: a web of political relationships and arrangements with financially shaky companies with ties to key decision makers in the process.

Steffy reviews material that will mostly be familiar to readers of the Vision 1920 blog. There are a few things we've missed here, though:

Bob Pearson, an Introgen director at the time of the grant and a Perry campaign contributor, is also a member of the 17-member advisory board that reviews the tech fund grants.

Introgen was founded by David Nance, a major Perry supporter who's currently on the statewide finance committee for the governor's re-election campaign. Nance, who quit Introgen just before the bankruptcy, donated $50,000 to Perry's campaign in 2005 and 2006, records show, and Perry has appointed him to three different technology committees — including the tech fund advisory panel — dating to Perry's stint as lieutenant governor.

Steffy has been a potbanger over A&M's tech vision before. He loses credibility, though with this:

“There's not a single dollar I've gotten off of any patents,” he [Giroir]said. “I never took a single dime from Xoma.”

Maybe not, but the A&M System has taken five million dimes from taxpayers, and they deserve better. The public may benefit from the NCTM's vaccine research, but it's the sort of deal that leaves taxpayers feeling sick.

5 million dimes is only $500K. The NCTM got five hundred million taxpayer dimes.

More misconceptions about TIGM

Rick Finnell's email (pdf) also discusses the origins of TIGM

Your second major concern was about how the decision was made to go after this Texas Enterprise Fund award. I certainly do not know when the conversations began, as I was a faculty member brought in to give my input sometime long after the process had already started. I had my own opinions as to whether or not TAMUS should get involved and what other options might have been explored.

This might seem to be surprising, given Guy Diedrich's account during the Giroir open forum

Vice Chancellor for Federal Relations and Commercialization Guy Diedrich on Monday called claims that TIGM started in the system offices "revisionist history." He told those at the forum that proposals first came from faculty members and people in the office of former Vice President for Research Richard Ewing.

If Finnell only came in later, who was driving the formation of TIGM? Let's look at the minutes(pdf) from the BoR meeting in July 2005

Mr. White said that the Texas Institute for Genomic Medicine (TIGM) is a great example of collaboration within the System. He commented on the involvement of Dr. Bob McTeer, Chancellor; Dr. Bob Gates, President of TAMU; Dr. Dick Ewing, Vice President of for Research at TAMU; Dr. Nancy Dickey, President of the System Health Science Center (HSC); Dr. Rick Finnell, Director of the Institute of Biosciences and Technology (IBT); and Mr. Guy Diedrich, Managing Director of the Technology Commercialization Center...

Mr. Nye said that on behalf of the Board and others, he wanted to recognize that Mr. White was very instrumental in receiving the idea, getting it germinated at the state level, attracting the funds and bringing it to the university when it could have gone many other places. He commended Mr. White and said that this was a wonderful undertaking and it was appreciated.

CHANCELLOR’S REMARKS

Dr. McTeer commented that the morning before the press conference, TIGM held its organizing board meeting and Mr. White was elected as chairman. He said that this was probably the most important thing that would happen during his administration.
Dr. McTeer said that there were many people who should be commended, such as Mr. Diedrich and Mr. Doug Centilli, Congressman Kevin Brady’s Chief of Staff.

In 2006, Dr. McTeer spoke to the Texas Lyceum

Not long after TIGM was formed, I had breakfast with Alan Greenspan in Washington. He asked me what was going on in my new world. When I started explaining all this to him, he interrupted me to ask why it was that most research mice are white rather than brown. After a long moment that seemed like an hour—a place I’d been before with him—I finally said, “Mr. Chairman, It’s a conundrum.”

Pretty soon, Guy Diedrich, who had brokered the TIGM deal (and who will be on your program tomorrow) brought me another deal to sign.

The record supports Diedrich's account. The idea for TIGM didn't start with the System; it started with Regent White, who probably heard about Lexicon from his time working with the Houston Technology Center. Diedrich, working in the VPR's office at TAMU was tasked with making it happen, so the proposals originated with TAMU, not TAMUS.

Misconceptions about TIGM

The CPI has posted an email (pdf) from Rick Finnell giving his take on the TIGM story. The email was in response to comments made during Brett Giroir's open forum by Prof. Mary Meagher. Excerpts:

First, the RFA that TIGM responded to from the NIH specifically requested conventional over conditional clones. If you read the RFA, and I trust that you have since you specifically commented on this point, then you would see that the request was for a straight (conventional) knockout with a reporter in C57BL/6 ES cells. That is it. While the scientific community, of which I am a part, would have preferred that NIH invest in a conditional asset, that is NOT what the RFA requested. So TIGM was absolutely responding to the RFA.

Vision 1920 blogged about the RFA here. Our tame faculty member says Finnell is correct that the RFA expressed concerns about high-throughput generation of conditional knockouts. However,

• Finnell does not address the requirement in the RFA for a plan to go after at least 25% of the genes missed by prior gene trapping approaches. TIGM is still based on gene traps, while the RFA emphasized the need for a targeted approach.
• Meagher's comment about conditional knockouts may not be relevant to what happened during the KOMP grant process, but it is relevant to the likely demand for TIGM knockout mice going forward

Vision 1920 points out, however, that low demand is a good thing, since Giroir said TIGM loses money on producing mice from ES cells.

The fact that TIGM barely existed (I was the only TIGM member, devoting 25% of my effort at the time of the submission), we had no track record which, as you know from submitting grant proposals to NIH, weighs heavily upon the reviewers. Yes, we could pretty much guarantee a successful outcome to Francis Collins, as we were in the position to put up the 273,000 ES cell clones from the 129 OmniBank 1 gene‐trap library, up to 3000 already made Lexicon knockout mice, and the 350,000 C57 ES cell clone gene‐trap library that was under construction. But we lacked credibility as we had no reputation for shipping products to end users...

Who could have predicted that a lack of a track record was an issue when the prospect of the KOMP grant was used as the basis for its original TIGM business plan?

Finnell also suggests shenanigans:

One could speculate endlessly about the other reasons why TIGM did not get the KOMP RFA (see the attached Science article), but that is really only self‐serving and no good can come of it at this point in time. Suffice to say that the review and its outcome were highly irregular, prompting Francis Collins and his senior KOMP staff to fly to Houston to try to explain to us in person why we were not funded. I don’t know about you, but when my NIH applications are not funded, my program officer doesn’t spontaneously call me and jump on a plane to talk to me in person about it. Quite the contrary, they are usually hard to find. This was unusual. That is all I can really say.

If Collins went forward with KOMP funding to TIGM rivals despite a "highly irregular" review, perhaps he should be asked about it when he comes up for confirmation as NIH director.