More than one-quarter of university scientists who are awarded patents on products that have been developed using federal cancer research funding decide to start their own businesses, "an astonishingly high rate of entrepreneurship," according to a study by economists at Indiana University and Germany's Max Planck Institute of Economics, the New York Times reports. For the study, which was financed by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, researchers studied the activities of almost 1,700 scientists who received the largest grants from the National Cancer Institute from 1998 to 2002. Among scientists whose research resulted in patents, 70% took the "traditional path" of assigning their patents to university technology transfer offices, while 30% "chose to sidestep university technology offices, often taking the more entrepreneurial path of trying to commercialize their inventions on their own," the Times reports. David Audretsch, an IU economist with an appointment at MPIE, said, "The investments in research and development are spilling out into the economy more than was appreciated. These scientists are doing a lot more than sitting in labs and publishing papers." However, the "entrepreneurial zeal" of academic researchers raises the question of "whether the direction of research is being overly influenced by the marketplace," according to the Times. Toby Stuart, a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, said, "Are basic scientific questions being neglected because there isn't a quick path to commercialization? No one really knows the answer to that question." The Times notes that the thought of "elite scientists enriching themselves from research financed by taxpayers' dollars" typically is not a concern for lawmakers, who take steps to "encourage federally financed research to move out of universities and into the marketplace." The study will be published on Monday and posted on EMKF's Web site (Lohr, New York Times, 4/10).