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February 04, 2014 at 08:18 AM
(Bloomberg) — Pfizer Inc., Eli Lilly & Co. and eight other large drugmakers will partner with the U.S. government in a $230 million effort to identify new approaches to treat Alzheimer’s, diabetes, lupus and arthritis.
Data generated from the work will be made public for other scientists to use, a move the U.S. National Institutes of Health called groundbreaking. The targeted diseases are some of the most prevalent conditions among Americans, costing the nation billions of dollars in treatment and lost productivity.
The venture may be particularly important in Alzheimer’s research. Since 1998, there have been more than 100 attempts to develop a treatment, and all have failed. The last two years have featured setbacks by Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. Sanofi Chief Executive Officer Chris Viehbacher has said his company won’t pursue therapies there because the science isn’t advanced enough to justify the risks and cost to develop a drug.
‘We are going to try to increase the odds of picking the right targets to go after for the next generation of drug development,’’ Francis Collins, the NIH director, said today at a press conference in Washington. “We want to pick them at the very beginning of the development process and thus avoid wasting precious time and money chasing down drugs.”
The companies and the NIH will split the $230 million cost about equally, Collins said.
More than 5 million Americans suffer with Alzheimer’s disease, and the number is expected to triple by 2050. The only drugs approved for the condition ease symptoms for a few months while the debilitating brain disease rampages on. Still, the treatments generate more than $5 billion annually.
Research coordinated by the NIH will include collecting tissue samples from thousands of patients to look for common “biomarkers” that might be good targets for new drugs, the agency said in a statement. The first projects are expected to last three to five years, and may lead to collaborations on other diseases if the research is successful, NIH said.
