Accessibility links

Breaking News

Ten Drug Companies Plan Joint Research on Key Diseases


Ten of the world's biggest drug companies -- normally the most competitive of rivals -- are joining with U.S. health experts in an unusual new effort to develop treatments for major diseases.

The agreement was announced Tuesday in Washington. It calls for the group to spend $230 million over the next five years as researchers look for cures for Alzheimer's disease, type 2 diabetes, and two autoimmune disorders, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

The drug companies collectively have spent billions of dollars over recent years as they search for new drugs, bigger profits and a competitive edge over other drugmakers.

But the director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, said the corporate do-it-alone approach has led to a high failure rate in the development of groundbreaking drugs, "while patients and their families wait."

He said the challenge of drug research "is beyond the scope of any one of us" and that it was time to "increase our collective odds of success."

The NIH and the government's Food and Drug Administration helped form the research group, calling itself the Accelerating Medicines Partnership. It includes several private groups fighting specific diseases.

The drug companies in the research partnership include seven American firms: AbbVie, Biogen Idec, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, Lilly, Merck and Pfizer. Great Britain's GlaxoSmithKline is a partner, as are France's Sanofi and Japan's Takeda.

The group has agreed that it will make its research data and analysis available to the public, giving other researchers access to information they could use for further drug development studies.
XS
SM
MD
LG