Collaboration between industry and academia - prospects for male fertilitycontrol

Drug development within the pharmaceutical industry is probably the field w ith the highest level of regulations. Due to the complexity of the differen t components of drug development and drug surveillance the need for a sophi sticated organization and infrastructure is obvious. In addition, there is a necessity for sufficient resources and long-term commitment as well as lo gistic and long-term knowledge management. In order to secure high professi onal standards at all levels of this highly complex value creating chain, t he number of cooperative arrangements in the pharmaceutical industry are in creasing. The identification of new targets in the drug finding process cal ls in particular for outside partners. At the same time the preparedness of non-industrial researchers to cooperate with industry has also increased s ignificantly. The area of fertility control, especially male fertility cont rol, provides an excellent example for this kind of cooperation between ind ustrial and non-industrial partners. Here a cooperative network is describe d which probably meets practically all relevant criteria for both the non-i ndustrial but also the industrial partner. Some principles for the manageme nt of such a cooperative network are discussed. We believe that this kind o f network can serve as a model for similar networks in other fields. (C) 19 99 International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics.