Dollars for Profs
Dig Into University Researchers' Outside Income and Conflicts of Interest
Published Dec. 6, 2019
This database was last updated in December 2019 and should only be used as a historical snapshot. There may be new or amended records not reflected here.
Conflict of Interest
Institutions must file significant disclosures to the National Institutes of Health if they determine financial relationships could affect the design, conduct or reporting of the NIH-funded research. The NIH provided us with their entire financial conflict of interest database, with filings from 2012 through 2019.
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William Hawkins
Washington University, Department: Surgery
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Accuronix Therapeutics
Equity Interest - Non-publicly traded entity ( e.g., stock, stock option, or other ownership interest)
Based on WU’s Research COI Policy and the Procedures for Determining and Managing Research Financial Conflicts of Interests, the Conflicts of Interest Review Committee (CIRC) determined Dr. Hawkins’s personal financial relationship with Accuronix Therapeutics creates a financial conflict of interest due to the following reasons:
• His personal financial relationship is related to the research because the research is evaluating a product licensed to Accuronix Therapeutics
• He is entitled to future royalties from the licensing of the IP, which is evaluated in the above listed research being conducted at WU
• The primary focus of Accuronix Therapeutics is to commercialize the IP being developed and evaluated in the research
• The outcomes of the research could directly benefit Accuronix Therapeutics
• Since he owns equity in the company, he could directly benefit should the company’s equity value increase as a result of the study
• His role in the grant is design of the study, collecting/analyzing/reviewing data, reporting results, oversight of the research, mentor and supervising individuals involved in the research will directly affect all aspects of the research.
While the CIRC determined Dr. Hawkins has a financial conflict of interest, we concluded that sufficient mechanisms exist to ensure the objectivity and integrity of the research, based on the following reasons:
• He is uniquely qualified by virtue of his experience and expertise and the research could not be conducted as effectively without his involvement
• The research is basic in nature and in its early stages
• His only role in the human study is to help recruit potential participants and will not be involved in the consenting of participants
• There is no increase in risk to the human research participants because their only involvement is to provide tumor samples for in vitro and in vivo testing
• Additionally, a plan has been developed to mitigate his financial conflict of interest
On the path to the clinic: Lead optimization and pathway analysis of the pancreatic cancer-selective drug conjugate SW V-49
Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is the third most lethal cancer and notoriously resistant to standard chemotherapy. We present here a novel strategy for the delivery of a small molecule drug cargo (dm-Erastin) selectively into pancreatic cancer (using the sigma-2 ligand SV119) causing tumor-selective cell death. We propose to comprehensively characterize the novel cancer-selective drug conjugate SW V-49 and evaluate its mode of action and its pharmacologic properties in preclinical models of pancreatic cancer.
Filed on July 25, 2018.
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William Hawkins filed other conflict of interest disclosures with the NIH:
| Name | Institution | Type | Company | Disclosed Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| William Hawkins | Washington University | Conflict of Interest | Accuronix Therapeutics | Value cannot be readily determined |
| William Hawkins | Washington University | Conflict of Interest | Accuronix Therapeutics | Value cannot be readily determined |
| William Hawkins | Washington University | Conflict of Interest | Accuronix Therapeutics | Value cannot be readily determined |
| William Hawkins | Washington University | Conflict of Interest | Accuronix Therapeutics | Value cannot be readily determined |
| William Hawkins | Washington University | Conflict of Interest | Accuronix Therapeutics | Value cannot be readily determined |
Notes: When a more specific filing date is not available for an individual financial disclosure or conflict of interest form, we use the year the form was filed. If the year was not disclosed, we report the range of years covered by our public records requests. In a few cases, a start date was provided instead of a filing date. In those cases, we use the start date instead.
Fewer than 10% of records from the University of Florida and fewer than 1% of records from the University of Texas system were removed because they did not contain enough information.
ProPublica obtained additional financial disclosures and conflict of interest forms that we have not yet digitized and added to the database. You can download those disclosures in the ProPublica Data Store.