After 1996, the NIH shifted Trent to confidential reports of outside income. Corporate documents show he continued to serve on the scientific advisory boards of biomedical companies. One of them was Ilex Oncology Inc. of Texas. Another was RHeoGene; the Pennsylvania company paid Trent $10,000 from spring 2001 to last year, he said.
His consulting deals, he said, were approved by NIH officials.
Most of his private consulting while at the NIH, Trent said, was "based on my general scientific expertise, as somebody that's knowledgeable in the area of cancer genomics and cancer genetics."
Trent declined to discuss what he did for each company. But he said that he viewed all of his paid consulting as part of the NIH's obligation to "translate" basic research for the benefit of patients.
"If we can help [the companies] more effectively do what they do, then I think that furthers science, helps people," Trent said. "That's the right thing to do."
Asked how an NIH scientist avoids using unpublished, confidential government information while advising paying clients, Trent said that he did not present companies with details of his ongoing NIH research.
"I'm not saying that in your mind isn't information that has broadened your understanding as a scientist," he said. "And some of that came from your work in the government."
Since leaving the NIH in October 2002, Trent has been president and scientific director of the Translational Genomics Research Institute, a nonprofit center in Phoenix.
-- David Willman
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CASE STUDY | JEFFREY SCHLOM
A Cancer Expert Who Aided Studies Using a Drug Wanted by a Client
BETHESDA, Md. -- While managing one of the National Cancer Institute's major laboratories, Jeffrey Schlom has built a busy outside career as a consultant.
Within a decade, he has accepted fees totaling $331,500 from 20 biomedical companies, his yearly income-disclosure reports show.
The company that paid him the most -- $127,000 -- was Cytoclonal Pharmaceutics Inc. of Dallas. While Cytoclonal worked on a more efficient way to produce the popular cancer drug Taxol, Schlom helped lead two NIH-funded studies in which Taxol played a crucial part.
Schlom was a co-author of two medical journal articles that reported positive results from that research, conducted at the University of Alabama and published in August 2001 and September 2002.
