No doubt few things had more impact on the academic field of biochemistry in the interwar period than industry's involvement in the production of vitamins and other pharmaceuticals. Hendrik Westenbrink, who worked as an administrator in one of the most important scientific laboratories for vitamin research in the Netherlands in the 1920s, harked back nostalgically to the time before the Great War, when ‘university laboratories were the only places where scientific activities could unfold and where researchers could work on the most topical subjects with the help of modest resources’. In a paper published in 1938 Westenbrink added that:

What Westenbrink described here had far-reaching consequences for university scientists. The more academic vitamin research grew dependent on commercial funding, the more scientists had to cope with the pressure and influence of industry.