Matching MTAs (and other legal documents)
A material transfer agreement (an MTA), a contract between parties that tracks the transfer of research materials, is necessary to outline which party has a right to the intellectual property produced through experiments on research materials, as well as possession of the materials themselves. Unfortunately, the Legal department (which processes MTAs) and the Protocol department (which keeps track of the ongoing experiments and materials used) were not effectively communicating, so there are 315 experiments that are unmatched to MTAs. Using the Sudoku method, I searched through TGen’s database by company. In each company’s file, I searched for potential matching documents based on PI names, study title, collaborators, sample provider, and sample provided. Once a potential match was found, it was entered into the ORQCM spreadsheet. Of the 315 experiments that initially needed to be matched with MTAs, 194 were successfully matched. This project aims to close the communication gap between the Legal department and Protocol department at TGen. In the future, increased communication between the two departments, by utilizing the spreadsheet to match the MTAs with their experiments, will prevent this dilemma from reoccurring.
