Ultimately, Phillips connected with Santarus Corp., a California start-up company that was hungry for new products. Santarus did clinical studies that produced the same good results Phillips had found, eventually winning approval from the FDA. A powdered version of the drug, called Zegerid™, is already available. Capsules and chewable tablets will be out soon. "I had to be a Missouri mule to stick it out" to the finished product, Phillips says.

Research administrators say that for the next generation of faculty inventions, the journey from idea in the lab to product on the market will be less arduous. Six years ago, the University of Missouri System established the Office of Technology & Special Projects in partnership with its four campuses.

The office's dozen staff are more than twice the number the University used to have working on technology transfer. Its $450,000 annual budget for patent applications is five times what it used to be. "We reach out to the faculty. We give seminars. We encourage them when they have something innovative they think may be patentable," says Sharpe, a pharmacist with a doctorate in health care administration who used to hold a similar position at the University of Mississippi. "Faculty now have a greater interest in commercializing their inventions and starting new companies."

In the past this wasn't the case at MU or on most other campuses. In 1980, Congress, fearful that countries such as Japan and Germany might overtake the United States in technological innovation, passed into law the Bayh-Dole Act, legislation that gave universities the patent rights to discoveries made during the course of federally funded research.

The law had the intended effect, setting off a tidal wave of invention and collaboration with private industry. But critics say commercialization has had some unfortunate consequences as well.

"What was once a culture of autonomous research has morphed in recent decades into something more closely resembling 'University Inc.,'" Jennifer Washburn, a fellow of the New America Foundation, wrote recently in New Scientist.

Academia's growing business orientation has meant that fields of study that are likely to make money have received greater university support, according to critics such as Washburn, while other disciplines with less profit potential have been left to limp along on their own.

The free exchange of information also has been endangered as universities take a proprietary interest in their faculties' research. The National Institutes of Health have raised concerns that universities aren't sharing newly developed reagents and other research tools developed with federal dollars. Some universities also have been quick to grant exclusive rights to such valuable materials as new stem cell lines.

There are also concerns about conflicts of interest, particularly at medical schools where researchers who test new drugs may have a financial stake in the companies that make them.