One of the scientists who generates the most money in Spain does not receive a single euro for her discoveries

The biologist Giovanna Roncador is experiencing a “surreal” situation. She is one of the scientists who generates the most money in Spain thanks to her inventions, but she does not receive a single euro. Roncador, born in the Italian city of Trento 57 years ago, works in one of the best institutions specialized in cancer in the world, the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), in Madrid. She directs the Monoclonal Antibodies Unit, molecules that are designed in the laboratory to bind specifically to certain cells and be able, for example, to diagnose lymphomas. The sale of these antibodies to international companies generates approximately one million euros per year in exploitation rights for the CNIO, but the institution has not shared the benefits with the inventors since 2020 due to a Kafkaesque bureaucratic mess.

“I don't know what to do anymore, it's a very frustrating situation. I am truly tired and unmotivated, which is why I have stopped contacting companies to license the antibodies. Why aren't those who work well rewarded? It doesn't matter if you do it right or wrong,” laments the biologist. Roncador was working designing antibodies at the University of Oxford (United Kingdom) when she was hired in 2000 to help found the new cancer reference center in Spain. She says that no one demanded it of her, but after each new antibody developed for CNIO research, she made a point of contacting the leading companies to present the advances to them. If they were interested, Roncador herself negotiated the agreements, achieving millionaire income for her center, a public foundation attached to the Ministry of Science.

The Italian researcher says that her father was a truck driver, but he left behind the wheel to set up his own vehicle buying and selling company in his town, Mezzolombardo. “My father is very entrepreneurial and very good at negotiating, that's where he comes from,” she explains. Roncador's greatest success was developing an antibody that specifically targets a subtype of white blood cells, which has revealed new mechanisms of the immune response. Her team designed it with her colleague Alison Banham, from the University of Oxford. The British company has been collecting its operating profits since 2004, but Roncador only received them between 2014, when the CNIO board finally approved a distribution regulation, and 2019, just before the Ministry of Finance stopped payments.

The biologist gives an example. If a company earns 100,000 euros a year selling one of its antibodies, the CNIO receives about 15,000. After deducting expenses and the percentage for the Spanish institution, less than 6,000 euros would reach the inventors. In the case of her most successful antibody, almost half would go to Oxford and, of the remaining approximately 3,000 euros, Giovanna Roncador would receive 65% (about 1,900 euros annually); her right hand, the biologist Lorena Maestre, 28% (about 800 euros); and the head of the Protein Production Unit, Jorge Martínez Torrecuadrada, 7% (about 200 euros). Roncador and Maestre, the most affected because they generate the most money, sued the CNIO before a social court in Madrid, on September 19, 2022, to avoid the expiration of their rights, according to the documentation they have had. access EL PAÍS.

The researcher estimates that the sale of 65 of her antibodies has produced more than 8.5 million euros of net income in the public coffers of the CNIO since 2004. The institution began to share profits with its inventors in 2014, but stopped doing so with the money of 2020 and subsequent years. A report from the General Intervention of the State Administration – the internal control body of the state public sector – then recommended “the immediate suspension” of the distribution system. “Royalties are a regulatory concept that does not exist in our legislation and lacks regulatory development,” defended the auditors, assigned to the Ministry of Finance. The report also suggested recalculating the benefits downwards, deducting more of the center's expenses.

Snorer sighs, sitting in her small office, decorated with photographs of the singer David Bowie. “Such a hyper-bureaucratized system discourages the entrepreneurial spirit,” she maintains. “I am exhausted from investing my time and energy in battles that other countries around us have completely overcome,” she emphasizes. The biologist is the founder and current president of the European Monoclonal Antibody Network, with laboratories in 13 countries.

Fifty CNIO researchers wrote to the Ministry of Science on December 12, 2022 to communicate that they considered it “unacceptable” to have to go to court to be able to collect a percentage for their inventions. “It is not only about economic rights, but also the way to value and reward exceptionally done work and promote the transfer of knowledge, thus generating beneficial returns for research and institutions,” argued the signatories, among whom were the director of the CNIO herself, María Blasco, and her predecessor, Mariano Barbacid.

The Ministry of Science responded two weeks later, emphasizing that the new Science Law, reformed in June 2022, already establishes that researchers in the state public sector will take “at least a third” of the benefits generated by the exploitation of their inventions. “I am giving the necessary impetus to expedite these last procedures as much as possible,” said the then Secretary General of Research, Raquel Yotti, in her response, sent on December 27, 2022.

The Kafkaesque process continued the following year. The CNIO management explains that its specialists studied “multiple” alternatives and sent their official proposal for a new distribution system on November 20, to the General Intervention of the State Administration. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Finance confirms that they received it, but “due to some problem” it did not reach the appropriate department until about 20 days ago.

I am exhausted from investing my time and energy in battles that other countries around us have completely overcome.

Roncador and his colleagues are “outraged.” Taking into account only the sale of antibodies, there are 23 CNIO scientists affected by non-payment, plus another 27 who now work at other institutions. “It is intolerable that the lack of interest and bureaucracy prevent solving a problem that the center and the researchers themselves agree to solve, in accordance with the Law, approaching three years without a solution,” explains the Italian biologist. Licenses for inventions by CNIO scientists generated 1.6 million euros in 2023, 23% more than the previous year.

The situation is so unusual that the CNIO management itself supports the claims of the researchers who have sued the institution for non-payment of exploitation rights. “In the other Spanish research centers this distribution does take place, provided for in current legislation. This is an anomaly that discriminates against CNIO researchers and significantly harms the center's innovative activity,” the management explains to EL PAÍS. “The CNIO, an institution of scientific and innovation excellence in Spain, cannot be in a state of exception in relation to the distribution of operating profits,” he says.

Biochemist Eva Ortega Paíno, new Secretary General of Research at the Ministry of Science, knows the problem very well. She was the scientific director of the CNIO Biobank until the minister, Diana Morant, hired her three months ago. “At the Ministry we are aware of this situation and we are monitoring it to ensure its resolution. We trust that it will be evaluated as soon as possible,” says Ortega. Everyone is waiting for the response from the Treasury.

In the lobby of the CNIO there is a giant banner in English and Spanish: “

Decent salaries NOW at CNIO!

Fair salaries NOW at the CNIO!” The works council installed it because the oldest workers earn little more than when the center was founded a quarter of a century ago. Giovanna Roncador's salary is 2,681 euros, with 14 payments a year. That of her number two, Lorena Maestre, is 1,794 euros. They are two of the scientists who generate the most money in Spain, in one of the best cancer research centers in the world.

The CNIO management assures that "until now it has not been possible to make promotions due to restrictions set by the General State Budgets." Scientist Carmen Guerra, president of the works council, explains that this has created a paradoxical situation: the new signings come in earning the maximum of the old salary tables, so they earn more than the veterans, with their salaries de facto frozen for a while. quarter of a century. There is an audit underway to “remediate pay inequalities,” according to management. There are also fifteen complaints from CNIO workers in progress, according to the president of the committee.

Guerra left the Jackson Laboratory, in the United States, to join the CNIO in 1998, with an exciting offer. A quarter of a century later, he says that he earns practically the same as he did then, 2,533 euros per month (if divided into the 14 typical payments), despite having more responsibilities. Guerra, a 57-year-old from Madrid, is the co-inventor of a mouse cell line with very interesting genetic modifications to study the mechanisms of a gene involved in millions of tumors. The CNIO owes him tens of thousands of euros in unpaid exploitation rights.

The biologist Lorena Maestre, born in Madrid 48 years ago, is forceful. “What we are demanding are minuscule amounts if you compare them with what they earn in some companies, bankers, economists… It is ridiculous. It seems that we should be ashamed of receiving a few thousand euros,” she deplores. Roncador, next to her, agrees: “This system is a competitive disadvantage with the rest of Europe, it makes our country very unattractive for leading scientists. We generate income for the CNIO of one million euros a year and it seems that we are asking for alms.”

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