Guidelines, policies, forms and agreements relevant to Harvard faculty inventors and external entrepreneurs, investors, and industry professionals.

Guidelines, Policies and Forms

Material Transfer Agreements

This section contains information for Harvard investigators regarding material transfers and material transfer agreements.


Why are MTAs important?

MTAs specify the rights, obligations, and restrictions of both the providing and receiving parties with respect to issues such as ownership, publication, intellectual property and permitted use and liability.

Our Mission: To provide high-quality, expedited service while keeping Harvard investigators’ interests protected (i.e. the freedom to publish research results, to transfer modifications to other non-profits, etc.).

Who should I contact about MTAs?



HMS/HSDM/HSPH Elizabeth Kohn
MTA Coordinator (Harvard Medical School Office)
Phone: (617) 432-1744
Fax: (617) 432-2788
Email: hms_materialtransfer@harvard.edu
FAS/SEAS/WYSS Melissa Dacey
MTA Coordinator (Cambridge Office)
Phone: (617) 495-7533
Fax: (617) 495-9568
Email: materialtransfer@harvard.edu


General Process

This section describes how OTD can assist you in handling your MTA requests for both incoming and outgoing materials.

Incoming Materials

Whenever a member of the Harvard faculty wishes to obtain materials from a third party (whether from a non-profit or for-profit institution), the receiving scientist should follow the steps outlined below:

  1. Submit your request via our online submittal form and attach a copy of the MTA for our review, negotiation, and signature. The submittal form will provide OTD personnel with essential information to assess your request. You will receive an automated confirmation email upon submitting the form. OTD personnel may follow up with you if more information is needed.

  2. The appropriate OTD personnel will then review the agreement request in view of the submittal form information and decide whether the MTA is acceptable as is or requires some negotiations to comply with institutional policies.
  3. If the terms are acceptable, OTD will sign the agreement on behalf of Harvard and return it to the other party. If the terms are not acceptable, OTD will negotiate the appropriate revisions with the other party. Once the agreement has been finalized, OTD will contact the Harvard Principal Investigator to collect his or her signature. OTD will later e-mail a PDF copy of the fully signed agreement to the Harvard Principal Investigator for his or her records.

For further information on the above process or to inquire about the status of a specific agreement, please use the contact information provided on this page.

Please note that OTD does not coordinate packaging or shipment of materials. The Harvard Principal Investigator is responsible for these logistical details and for obtaining any necessary approvals from committees such as the following:

  1. Committee on Microbiological Safety (COMS),
  2. Harvard’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC),
  3. Committee on the Use of Human Subjects Office/Institutional Review Board (IRB), and/or
  4. Harvard’s Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee (ESCRO)


OTD will gladly help the Harvard Principal Investigator with facilitating such approvals as needed.

Outgoing Materials

Whenever a member of the Harvard faculty wishes to provide materials to a third party (whether to a non-profit or for-profit institution), the sending scientist should follow the steps outlined below:

  1. Submit your request via our online submittal form. The submittal form will provide our OTD personnel with essential information to draft the MTA. You will receive an automated confirmation email upon submitting your request. OTD personnel may follow up with you if more information is needed.

  2. Upon drafting a template, OTD will send it by email to the requestor and copy you on the correspondence.
  3. The requestor will then return the partially executed MTA or will propose changes for OTD’s review. When the MTA has been finalized, OTD will coordinate signatures. In most cases, the Harvard Principal Investigator will not need to sign an outgoing MTA. OTD will inform the Harvard Principal Investigator when the MTA is completed by emailing you a PDF copy of the fully signed agreement for your records.

For further information on the above process or to inquire about the status of a specific agreement, please use the contact information provided on this page.

MTAs with other not-for-profit institutions

Although MTAs with other non-profit institutions would seem to be straightforward, many require at least some level of negotiation. Each institution has its own set of policies that must be accommodated in both incoming and outgoing MTAs. To reduce negotiations, Harvard University is a signatory to the Uniform Biological Material Transfer Agreement (UBMTA), a form approved by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). When sending out published material to other non-profits, Harvard typically uses the UBMTA as its default template in order to expedite review and approval by the Recipient. However, before doing so, OTD needs to make sure that there are no special circumstances that would require specific terms. Instances where the UBMTA would not be appropriate or would require some additional terms include but are not limited to the following:

  1. When the materials are unpublished and OTD would like to ensure the Harvard Principal Investigator’s right to publish first;
  2. When the materials have been licensed to a for-profit institution; or
  3. When the materials involve third parties rights (i.e., when the material is a modification of a material received by a third party)

Harvard OTD aims to simplify the process by which two non-profit institutions may exchange materials. We often encourage the use of the UBMTA among our colleagues and welcome this format for incoming materials.

MTAs with for-profit institutions

Please note that the transfer of materials to or from for-profit institutions is usually managed on a case-by-case basis. For-profit MTAs often take longer to process than MTAs between two non-profit institutions. Harvard Principal Investigators should submit requests as early as possible to avoid delays with research.

For transfer of materials to Harvard from a company, OTD is usually required to use that company's internally developed formats. Each MTA must, therefore, be negotiated on a case-by-case basis, with particular issues being more important to one company than to another. The following, however, are a number of recurring issues:

  1. Confidentiality: When confidential information is exchanged along with the material, the company requests that such information not be further disclosed. If the information is necessary for interpretation of the results obtained using the material, that same information may also be required for meaningful publication of those results. Having agreed to hold the information confidential could, therefore, prohibit an investigator from publishing his/her research. There are several ways to deal with this issue. We can: (a) request that no confidential information be provided, (b) request that only confidential information that is not required for publication be provided (i.e., background confidential information), or (c) request that any confidential information which is provided be disclosed if the investigator can demonstrate that such disclosure is necessary for meaningful publication.
  2. Delay in Publication: In order to protect potentially patentable inventions, companies often demand a review period for manuscripts, abstracts or hard-copies of presentation materials. This demand may jeopardize the timeliness of publication. Harvard policies allow for a delay of no more than thirty days for review of manuscripts prior to submission, with the possibility of an additional thirty day delay (i.e., sixty days in total) for filing of patents.
  3. Intellectual Property: Care must be taken to assure appropriate protection of Harvard’s rights in inventions (including modifications and derivatives of the materials) that are conceived and/or reduced to practice by the investigator in the performance of the research with the materials.
  4. Replication: Many scientific journals require that materials be made available to other academic investigators for independent verification of research results. We therefore request that companies transferring materials to Harvard investigators agree to provide those same materials to other academic scientists who wish to repeat the published experiments. Although some companies argue that such provisions jeopardize the company's control over its own material, a middle ground can usually be found that accommodates each party's needs.

OTD may need to obtain the Harvard Principal Investigator’s input from time-to-time when negotiating a for-profit MTA. When the for-profit MTA has been finalized, OTD personnel will contact the Harvard Principal Investigator for signature or to indicate that the material may be released to the requestor.

Guidelines for Harvard Principal Investigators

**Only the Harvard Principal Investigator of the lab may sign MTAs in addition to an Authorized Official from Harvard’s Office of Technology Development.**

MTA terms may vary on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, OTD strongly encourages Harvard Principal Investigators to review each MTA carefully before signing. OTD may notify the Harvard Principal Investigator of specific or unusual terms, but the Harvard Principal Investigator should read through each MTA’s general restrictions, if any.

MTAs are legally binding contracts between Harvard and the other party. A fully signed MTA requires that the Harvard Principal Investigator and lab members follow the terms and conditions as stated in the agreement. Breach of these terms could result in liability for Harvard and could significantly affect the Harvard Principal Investigator’s research and the ability to publish.

By signing an MTA, the Harvard Principal Investigator should understand that he or she will not own the incoming material. Ownership will most likely remain with the Provider Institution. Therefore, if the Harvard Principal Investigator or a lab member decides to leave Harvard University, he or she will need to obtain explicit written permission before transferring the material. Please feel free to contact Harvard OTD to facilitate this process as needed.

==If you have questions or concerns at any time, please don’t hesitate to contact OTD.==