SAN FRANCISCO -- A controversial financial partnership between a private company and a public university appears to be ending, falling victim to a slumping biotechnology sector.
The five-year, $25 million deal between biotechnology giant Syngenta International A.G. and the University of California, Berkeley, will expire next November. But a deadline to renew the deal passed last month without the school hearing from the company.
School officials speculate that since the deadline passed without formal word from the Swiss company, the deal -- as it is written today -- will expire without renewal next year. Fueling that belief is the fact that Syngenta is in the same choppy financial waters as the rest of the agriculture biotechnology industry. The company is shuttering its San Diego-based Torrey Mesa Research Institute, which oversaw the deal.
The sector has been particularly hard hit by the overall economic downturn and increasing opposition to its genetically modified food products.
On Wednesday, the chief executive of Syngenta competitor Monsanto Co. resigned amid sagging sales and the company's inability to shake its financial struggles.
Syngenta spokeswoman Lori Captain said that while the economy was tough, the school's speculation still surprised the company.
"There's been no decision," Captain said.
The contract calls for Syngenta to annually pay $5 million to the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at Berkeley. In return, the company can license inventions created by many of the department's scientists.
The first-of-its-kind deal polarized the campus and was intensely criticized by some when it was struck on Nov. 23, 1998. Some welcomed the money as a godsend that has brought their research to a higher level; others saw it as selling a college department to private industry.
So far, Syngenta has the option to license one university invention.
"We are pleased to date with the results," Captain said.
School officials also said the deal can't be judged solely on a single license. Basic research today could lead to blockbuster products five years from now, they said.
"It's premature to judge whether the deal was or wasn't successful for the company," said Susan Jenkins, Berkeley's administrator of the partnership.
But Jenkins said the school views its end of the deal as a success.
The Syngenta money allowed its researchers to engage in high-risk experiments that would not have been funded through government grants. Data from some of those experiments is now being used to successfully apply for government grants, money that Jenkins said would help offset the loss of Syngenta money.
Jenkins said the school is confident it will be able to overcome the loss through other funding sources if the deal is not renewed. She also said the school hopes that researchers will be able to secure individual grants from the company.
"We are not cutting back at all," she said.
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