The National Institute for Pharmaceutical Technology and Education (NIPTE) has been formed by eleven leading universities in the US to create an organization that will foster interdisciplinary research and collaboration between the academia, industry and the regulatory agencies. Normally, universities tend to work with a few (two to five)collaborators. However, in this case due to the magnitude of the problem that NIPTE intends to handle and the fact that no single university appears to have all the needed expertise, it was decided early on to involve as many universities in this coalition as possible. The paper will describe how this kind of a coalition was formed, the process followed, some of the issues faced, and the structure that has been designed to make the collaboration successful. The paper will also discuss why these types of multi-university collaborations may be more relevant and have greater viability in today's tight research funding environment.