Drug Firms, NIH, and Nonprofits Join to Seek Breakthroughs

Ten large pharmaceutical companies, seven nonprofit groups, and the National Institutes of Health announced an unusual collective effort Tuesday to speed development of new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, Type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus, The New York Times writes.

Participants in the five-year, $230-million initiative will regularly meet and share data—making their findings freely available—to determine what work is most likely to lead to effective approaches. Leaders of the program said that despite enormous investments, drug makers have failed to produce breakthroughs on the four diseases on their own.

NIH Director Dr. Francis S. Collins said the idea for a partnership among drug firms and disease charities such as the American Diabetes Association and the Alzheimer’s Association grew out of a May 2011 conference of pharmaceutical researchers. “It was very clear that everybody in the room had the same sense of a real opportunity. But there was such a thicket of information to try to sift through. No company, no organization, not even the NIH itself, could do this in a timely fashion,” he said.