by Cate Montana

Google “innovative science,” and what hits page one? Five educational sites, a genomic corporation, a mainstream medical foundation with two hits, a legal organization that specializes in scientific documentation and a password protected medical journal.

“Innovative science” sounds good in brochures, business prospectuses and annual reports. But the phrase usually comes with tag lines like “reliance on proven programs and projects,” or “partnering with governmental, corporate and other non-profit agencies.”

It’s not that innovative science doesn’t happen in mainstream laboratories. It does. Passion, dedication and painstaking experimental techniques sometimes yield startling results. But startling is not what mainstream is usually looking for.

Take the experience of Candace Pert, Ph.D. While working at the NIH (National Institutes of Health) near Washington D.C. in the 1980s, she discovered a way to block the AIDS virus from binding to a cell’s receptor sites and entering the cell…kind of like cutting off the attack at the beachhead, is the way she puts it.

Candace Pert, Ph.D. is a professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine, in Washington D.C.

Pert’s radical discovery enabled her and her research partner, Michael Ruff, to develop an AIDS drug called Peptide T, which has been in human trails and been found to have “very profound antiviral effects” without toxicities. “Our drug was the very first entry inhibitor,” says Pert. “And it was not greeted with open arms ‘cause it was kind of far ahead of its time.”

 Not only did Pert and Ruff have difficulty getting their results published, highly inaccurate lab testing of their procedures at Harvard following publication resulted in a rapid death knell verdict for Peptide T for “failure to replicate.” Since then, Pert and Ruff have struggled to bring the drug to the markets independently. And yet, says Pert, “Ironically, today, every big company is looking … [for] entry inhibitors for HIV, hoping to find one that’s non-toxic.”

What happened? What combination of events and attitudes could knock such a promising discovery out of the mainstream scientific ballpark for 20 years?

In her book, Molecules of Emotion, Pert describes the environment at the NIH

during her 16 year tenure, and the dynamics that surrounded the resistance to her and Ruff’s discovery.

"I had failed to court favor. Perhaps I should have gone begging, hat in hand, to an NIH AIDS power boy for help in getting our paper published. But my thinking was, the sooner we got our paper into print, the sooner testing could begin on people with our new drug, and I didn’t want to waste time by doing what I thought of as massaging male egos.

How incredibly naïve I was! And the hubris I had! Who was I but a fairly accomplished bench researcher oblivious of the fact that testing a new drug was the big time - showtime! - for most scientists, and I hadn’t even read the script. Stumbling into a scene where major players were about to sit down and carve up the funding bonanza AIDS research promised to be, I was clearly an intruder. It is understandable, in retrospect, why the arrival of Peptide T, coming out of left field, was not greeted with enthusiasm."

Politics, patience, tenure, good ‘ol boy networking and back-scratching are the name of the game in government, university, and corporate R&D labs the world over. The higher up you go, the bigger the stakes, the more the research costs, the greater the potential payoffs, the tighter the game gets.

William A. Tiller, Ph.D., fellow to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and Professor Emeritus of Stanford University’s Department of Materials Science, concurs. “It’s a very difficult situation where the scientific community is just incredibly stuck,” says Tiller. “It can’t get outside the present box they’re in. The universities depend upon funding from donors who are likewise stuck. It’s very difficult for them to have professors who espouse strange things. … The government which funds the research in this country - they follow established lines. They are interested in the conventional. … It’s all incredibly difficult for the establishment to change.”

William A TIller, Ph.D. is a Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, and founder of the W.A. Tiller Foundation for New Science

Changing the scientific paradigm

When the establishment can’t be changed from the inside, the only recourse is to step outside the box – which is exactly what both Pert and Tiller ended up doing, although in entirely different ways for entirely different reasons.