Balancing innovation and integrity: the biomedical research ecosystem at a crossroads

Competing interests

RGG is a co-founder, shareholder, company officer and board member of The Tiny Cargo Company, Inc., which develops therapeutic products based on milk exosomes from his university laboratory; related intellectual property is licensed to Virginia Tech and targets ischemic cardiac injury, life-threatening radiation injury, and side effects of radiation therapy. RGG is a co-founder, shareholder, company officer and board member of Acomhal Research, Inc., which is developing the JM2 peptide under license from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) for glioblastoma and breast cancer. RGG is a co-founder and shareholder of Xequel Bio, Inc. (formerly FirstString Research, Inc.), which is developing the αCT1 peptide for wound healing indications; JM2 and αCT1 were invented in his laboratory, with associated intellectual property licensed from MUSC, his former academic institution. RGG and/or its institutions are associated with issued and pending patents related to the above technologies; details can be found in the Supplementary Information.