University Battle Over Alzheimer's Research Dollars Not Resolved by Court Decision

While visiting in California this summer, I began following the dispute between University of California San Diego (UCSD), a public university, and University of Southern California (USC), a private university, over control of Alzheimer's research, originally known as the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study.  At first the outcome seemed predicted by judicial rulings favoring UCSD in a suit filed in San Diego courts. The most recent news coverage, however, suggests that what began with USC hiring away UCSD's top researcher, has continued with USC successfully luring away major funding. As reported in a San Diego Union-Tribune article:

While the La Jolla-based campus has so far won in court — with a Superior Court judge giving it continued control of the Alzheimer’s initiative — it is losing most of the contracts, money and trust of that program’s participants across the country.

 

USC said it has obtained eight of the project’s 10 main contracts after convincing sponsors that it is better suited to manage their clinical trials of experimental drugs and therapies for the neurological disorder. Those sponsors are defecting from the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study, or ADCS, and shifting to an institute that USC recently opened in San Diego....

 

UC San Diego confirmed the major setback, but said USC may be overstating matters by claiming that the contract transfers are worth up to $93.5 million. UC San Diego is still totaling its financial losses. Officials at the La Jolla school concede that they failed to tightly manage the Alzheimer’s program and allowed it to drift away from campus life. UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla did not respond to requests for comment on the largest loss of research funding in the university’s history.

 

But campus officials said they are confident about rebuilding the Alzheimer’s program.

Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly was reported to be moving "millions" of dollars of research to USC control earlier this summer.

The USC Provost, while sounding very "corporate" in talking about USC's plans, is quoted as offering some consolation, with the possibility of working with UCSD in getting "back to being partners for better research."