The National Institutes of Health, a bastion of basic research, made a foray into drug development. NIH leaders today announced a 5-year plan of $ 0 million to set up a drug development services center at the agency. Chemists and toxicologists from the center alter promising compounds until they are ready to be tested in people. The focus will be on rare and neglected diseases.
"This initiative is really new," said NIH Director Raynard Kington acting in a press conference today. NIH "never tried to directly develop drugs for rare and neglected diseases" or the development of drug fact, period. the Therapeutics for Rare and neglected program diseases (TRND) is based on $ 100 million by molecular year Libraries NIH program, a small molecule screening program that some say is replicate work by pharmaceutical companies. But NIH officials say they will target diseases that industry is ignorant. "He has no intention of TRND compete with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies," said Stephen Groft, director of the NIH Office of Rare diseases research.
The program will be a space somewhere near the main NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, and will be composed of scientists recruited from industry. They will take potential drugs found at the NIH and the universities and alter their chemistry so that the compounds work well in humans without toxic side effects, a slow hard process. Then either NIH or company will apply to the Food and Drug Administration to test compounds in clinical trials. NIH could benefit from licensed drugs, but "this is not our goal," said Alan Guttmacher, acting director of the National Research Institute on the human genome. NHGRI will oversee the center, which will make its budget $ 24 million per year from each of the 27 NIH institutes and centers.
A challenge will be to choose the disease. NIH says there are 6800 rare diseases and others that are considered neglected, infectious disease mainly afflicting the developing world. A group of scientists and patient advocates will assist in selecting diseases based on scientific opportunities, Groft said.
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