NIH and Other Public Private Partnerships to Research Treatments for Multiple Diseases

Over the past few weeks, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has made a number of important announcements regarding collaborations with industry as well as the funding of several new research initiatives. Below is a summary of these stories. NIH Partners With Eli Lilly and Others on Rare Diseases FierceBiotechResearch reported that NIH selected four (4) new preclinical drug development studies to uncover new therapies for rare diseases. The projects will be funded through the Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND) program under NIH's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, NCATS, which we have written about previously. "TRND is grounded in partnerships with academic, government, pharmaceutical and patient advocacy groups. Working in collaboration, scientists conduct pre-clinical development of new drugs and then advance them to first-in-human clinical trials," said NCATS Director Christopher P. Austin, M.D. "Like all NCATS programs, TRND seeks to develop new technologies and more efficient paradigms for translation, in the context of important unmet medical needs." NIH classifies a rare disease as one that affects fewer than 200,000 Americans. There are more than 6,000 rare diseases, but effective pharmacologic treatments exist for only about 200 of these illnesses, according to NIH. For the first time, the TRND program will collaborate with a large pharmaceutical company. NIH selected Eli Lilly as a collaborator in developin...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs