NIH Director Speaks to Council About Potential New Arenas for Common Fund Support
Text Description of Slide
Opportunities in Biomedical Research (continued):
- Stage set for NIH to play an expanded role in translation
- New discoveries about the fundamental basis of disease
- Resources empowering academic investigators to develop lead compounds and "de-risk” projects
- Opportunity for public-private partnerships
- Small molecules
- Roadmap provides HTS capabilities that now exceed that of most pharmaceutical companies
- Many ICs are ramping up investments
- Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND) program now explicitly tackles the Valley of Death
- Common diseases are increasingly seen as a collection of rare diseases, so they fit this model too
- Stem cells (including hESCs and iPSCs)
- Explosion of new information likely with new NIH policy
- Therapeutic uses uncertain but urgent to pursue