James Sullivan - AMP

It's often said that baseball players have to generate 4 hits out of every 10 at-bats to be considered a Hall of Fame-caliber player.  Meteorologists are criticized for inaccurate forecasts more often than not.  But think about the drug development business: only one in every 5,000 to 10,000 compounds in drug discovery will make it through regulatory approval and even treatments that reach clinical trials only have a 16% chance of approval. (Source: Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. "Large Pharma Success Rate for Drugs Entering Clinical Trials in 1993-2004: 16%." Impact Report 2009; innovation.org) What if a baseball player was able to identify a technique that would improve his batting average?  Of if the weather person had a tool that would improve forecasting accuracy? The goal of the Accelerated Medicines Partnership (AMP) is to develop a greater understanding of the molecular pathways underlying complex chronic diseases and identify and validate biomarkers to accelerate the development of effective therapies in Alzheimer's and autoimmune diseases and type 2 diabetes. AMP is, in effect, the tool that has the potential to help us improve the industry's "batting average".  The pharmaceutical industry spends billions annually on research and development.  The ability to improve our success rate and productivity will have a exponential impact on our resources to devote to further research. Every delay or research setback represents a cost - both financial a...
Source: PHRMA - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news