Shareholders and taxpayers alike are growing frustrated with the pace for development of breakthrough therapies. Public expectations are high that the biopharmaceutical industry and academic researchers will deliver novel treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s and vaccines to address potential pandemics. But poor share performance of life science companies and declines in public funding for research reflect a growing unease with our progress.

One remedy would be would be to improve the breadth and depth of the university-industry partnership. I’m not suggesting that researchers fill the National Institutes of Health’s funding shortfall by turning to industry. Rather universities should form enhanced alliances with industry in order to better fulfill their mission of improving health care.

Helping patients and working with industry are really inseparable since university inventions by themselves rarely improve health. Instead, scientific inventors require the dedication, resources, and expertise of the commercial community to bring their advances to patients.

However, the move from bench to bedside requires the collaboration of diverse institutions that are too often separated by poor communication, outdated policies, cultural misunderstandings, and lack of institutional commitment. Information and funding gaps along the road from invention to treatment mean that many discoveries with great potential to improve human health will ultimately fail.

Health care was transformed in the 20th century when medicine became a scientific discipline taught in modern research hospitals. It may be that we are at a similar threshold today. Medical therapies could be transformed by bringing the biopharmaceutical industry and the biomedical research community together. Around the world, we are witnessing just such a revolution. From Singapore’s Biopolis to Cambridge’s Kendall Square, governments, universities, and industry are joining forces to build new research parks.

The idea behind these efforts is that large clusters of industry and academia working in close quarters will stimulate innovation. But while collocation is an excellent start, it is not enough. New organizations are required as well as efforts to bridge the gaps, a willingness to take risks, and investments to overcome bottlenecks.

This is just what the state of California is asking of QB3, the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research. QB3, which focuses on biomedical research, unites 150 laboratories on the UC Berkeley, UCSF, and UC Santa Cruz campuses in disciplines ranging from mathematics to human magnetic resonance imaging. QB3 is one of four University of California institutes of science and innovation whose purpose is to grow the California economy by speeding the pace of discovery. It will do this through increased collaborations among scientists at different UC campuses, and between these scientists and their counterparts in industry. The hope is to spawn the next generation of industries.

But uniting investigators in a single institute is not enough. To realize QB3’s potential will take a more hands-on approach. To this end QB3 has created a program called Discovery to Health. The name reminds academics that the goal is improving health, not enriching the university.

The university can enjoy royalties and sponsored research support, but extracting most favorable terms should not come at the expense of ensuring new drugs reach patients.

QB3 provides a variety of resources for entrepreneurs—including an incubator that can rent micro amounts of space to spin-outs—but the most important feature of the program is that it promotes collaboration. QB3 has created a team of scientists who serve as knowledge brokers. They meet with each investigator and suggest possible collaborators and commercial opportunities. These are the academic equivalents of venture capitalists (without the money).

These low-tech solutions are remarkably effective. Clinicians on one campus are now collaborating with computer scientists on another; laboratories that have never SHOWN entrepreneurial tendencies are now filing Small Business Innovation Research grants; and commercial partners who complained that it takes a year to initiate a research collaboration can now get started in two weeks.

Douglas Crawford is director of industry alliances for QB3, the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research, San Francisco.

The Journal of Life Sciences welcomes commentaries. To submit a piece, contact Daniel S. Levine at daniel.levine@blsmg.com or 415-591-5449.