Block 1—Source of Materials: This is the name of the institution that has agreed to supply materials to you. To speed up the process, it is important to also know the points of contact at that institution for material transfers, such as the scientist you are working with and a contact in the administrative office that takes care of the agreements themselves.

Block 2—Description of materials: This is self-explanatory, but try to be specific because this description becomes part of a legal agreement. It is important to protect yourself by not allowing inferences that you are responsible for more or different materials and information than what you are actually getting.

Block 3—Preferred transmittal date: Let us know if there is a critical deadline. MTA requests are handled on a "first-come, first-served" basis, but we can juggle priorities to accommodate special circumstances. On average, a simple agreement with no need to negotiate terms with the material provider is complete in a week to ten days after all steps are walked through, depending on workload levels. Complex agreements where significant issues, such as pre-existing intellectual property licenses that must be worked out, can require two months or more depending on the responsiveness and availability of the other party to negotiate.

Block 4—Mailing instructions: This is the address at the material-providing location to which the MTA documents are to be shipped. In addition, provide your own shipping address for the materials themselves.

Block 5—Principal investigator: Self-explanatory.

Block 6—Co-investigator: Self-explanatory.

Block 7—CUFS account number: This request is not made for purposes of financial auditing. All sponsored projects and grants are filed by CUFS number, and the number is needed so that we can access the grant file to review the sponsor's terms and conditions for intellectual property reporting, disposition of discoveries, etc. This can be a particularly important issue when the project sponsor and the material provider both assert rights to the same intellectual property arising from the research. It is very important that you provide all related CUFS accounts so that we understand all the potential parties tied in some way to the project.

Block 8—MTARF is new or revised?: If this material is simply an addition to other material that was received already from the same source, or there is some other change involved, check "revised" and we will apply the MTARF issues to the existing agreements.

Block 9—Inventions, intellectual property, and confidential information: If there is any possibility that an invention may result from your research, check yes for 9a. This will not delay processing of the agreement.

Block 10—Research subjects protections, animal use approvals, and safety training: You must advise us of the status of your IRB or IACUC application if human or animal subjects are involved. We do not hold-up executing the MTA until you have clearance, but we do need to see that you are considering this essential step. The MTA will normally be completed and provided, subject to your satisfying this requirement before beginning the research. For PIs in good standing with institutional requirements, the various safety training and certifications addressed are reminders to you to follow the required steps, and allow the University to track and audit compliance as needed.

Block 11—Conflict of interest: If you have any reportable financial interest in the outcome of the research, you need to update your REPA and advise us so that we can clear that hurdle to the project before importing the material. Most often, you already took care of this when the grant proposal was being submitted, but it is possible that an update might be needed if this is a new activity.

Block 12—Research summary: This should be a one or two sentence abstract "not pages and pages" of what you plan to do with the material and what you hope to learn from the research. This information helps us narrow the scope of intellectual property provisions to speed up the process and also to protect you and the University. Examples might be, "The compound will be applied to a new cell line to see if it causes protein XXX to be expressed;" or "The mice will be cross-bred to produce a strain that is deficient in dopamine production relevant to induced hypotension;" or "The compound will be administered adjunctively with interleukin and cyclosporin to determine if smaller doses of more anti-rejection drugs will reduce side effects." The description can be compared with existing patents both at the University and the institution providing the material to see what needs to be done to protect the rights of all parties.