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British companies are failing to reap substantial commercial benefits from neuroscience, even though British research is the second most cited in neuroscience patents in the United States, according to a 12-country audit of such research just published by the Wellcome Trust.

The audit reveals that, although 13 per cent of inventors named on US neuroscience patents are British, only 3.5 per cent of these patents are owned by British individuals or companies. Ownership is dominated by US industrial corporations.

The audit says this ‘exploitation gap’ in neuroscience — a generic problem in UK academic research — needs to be addressed. One helpful measure, it says, is the £60 million (US$97 million) ‘University Challenge’ fund set up by the government, the trust and the Gatsby Foundation to help universities commercialize their research.

The audit analysed 322 neuroscience research papers cited in 371 US patents. Three quarters of papers were basic research as opposed to clinical studies. Britain's 110 named inventors came second only to the United States, which dominated with 561. France had 50, Japan 29, Italy 20; Germany came third from bottom with two inventors.

Researchers from the United States dominate eight subfields in neuroscience by publishing around 50 per cent of papers in basic research and 60 per cent of clinical studies. Britain, however, is the only country whose share of research is steadily increasing in most neuroscience subfields.

Neuroscience research represents currently 16 per cent of the 227,000 papers in biomedicine published annually around the world.