Welcome to the Rigorous Reproducible Responsible Research Integrity at UF (R4I@UF) website! Please visit each month for a new case that may be used as a framework for a brief conversation about best research practices in your lab meeting, research conference, journal club, or any research meeting.
April 2026 – Clinical Collaboration Conundrum
A physician scientist and a molecular biologist are collaborating on a series of studies that involve cancer clinical trial subjects and biospecimens from those participants. The goal is to correlate genetic profiles with patient outcomes in response to the same protocol therapy. The clinician enrolls the subjects and his team obtains the samples which are processed in the molecular biologist’s lab; i.e., germline and tumor DNA is prepared and preserved, and cancer cell lines are grown from the primary tumor. Both DNA and cell lines are kept in a facility readily accessible to both collaborators. The molecular biologist believes that there are important correlational genomic findings, apart from the clinical data, that merit separate publication. He prepares a manuscript that will need to have the clinical data added, but the clinician refuses to provide them, saying the report is premature. In the dispute that follows, the physician scientist asserts ownership of the DNA and cell lines from patient samples. The dispute is brought to you as the department head to mediate.
Discussion Questions
1. What are the data ownership issues for this collaboration? Who owns the clinical data? Who owns the DNA and cancer cells lines?
2. Who should have access to, and use of, the clinical data and the materials prepared from patient samples?
3. What could a publication agreement made at the beginning of the collaboration have included?
This case scenario is from the NIH web page “Research Cases for Use by the NIH Community“. Please see the Collaborative Research web page for more information about collaboration.
To submit a “Case of the Month” for the R4I@UF website, please contact Wayne T. McCormack, PhD (mccormac at ufl.edu).