Accelerating Medicines Partnership – National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Accelerating Medicines Partnership – National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Great component – sharing data! Note below the bolded underlined portion

From the 4 March 2014 press release

The Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP) is a bold new venture between the NIH, 10 biopharmaceutical companies and several non-profit organizations to transform the current model for developing new diagnostics and treatments by jointly identifying and validating promising biological targets of disease. The ultimate goal is to increase the number of new diagnostics and therapies for patients and reduce the time and cost of developing them.

AMP will begin with three to five year pilot projects in three disease areas:

• Alzheimer’s disease
• type 2 diabetes
• autoimmune disorders of rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus)

For each pilot, scientists from NIH and industry have developed research plans aimed at characterizing effective molecular indicators of disease called biomarkers and distinguishing biological targets most likely to respond to new therapies.

Through this cross-sector partnership, which will be managed through the Foundation for the NIH (FNIH), NIH and industry partners are sharing expertise and resources — $230 million — in an integrated governance structure that enables the best informed contributions to science from all participants. A critical component of the partnership is that industry partners have agreed to make the AMP data and analyses publicly accessible to the broad biomedical community. These pilot projects will set the stage for broadening AMP to other diseases and conditions.

AMP Partners

Government	Industry	Non-Profit Organizations
FDA NIH	AbbVie Biogen Idec Bristol-Myers Squibb GlaxoSmithKline Johnson & Johnson Lilly Merck Pfizer Sanofi Takeda	Alliance for Lupus Research Alzheimer’s Association American Diabetes Association Lupus Foundation of America Lupus Research Institute Foundation for the NIH Geoffrey Beene Foundation PhRMA Rheumatology Research Foundation USAgainstAlzheimer’s

Budget: 5 years [$230 Million (Rounded) Total Project Funding]

($Millions)	Total Project	Total NIH	Total Industry
Alzheimer’s Disease	129.5	67.6	61.9
Type 2 Diabetes	58.4	30.4	28
Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus	41.6	20.9	20.7
Total	229.5	118.9	110.6

The Opportunity

The Challenge

The Impact

Governance

 

[Press release] NIH to partner with biopharmaceutical companies and nonprofits to diagnose/treat diseases

From the 5 February 2014 (US) National Institutes of Health press release

The Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP) is a bold new venture between the NIH, 10 biopharmaceutical companies and several non-profit organizations to transform the current model for developing new diagnostics and treatments by jointly identifying and validating promising biological targets of disease. The ultimate goal is to increase the number of new diagnostics and therapies for patients and reduce the time and cost of developing them.

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[At the risk of breaking copyright, this came via Twitter]

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AMP will begin with three to five year pilot projects in three disease areas:

• Alzheimer’s disease
• type 2 diabetes
• autoimmune disorders of rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus)

For each pilot, scientists from NIH and industry have developed research plans aimed at characterizing effective molecular indicators of disease called biomarkers and distinguishing biological targets most likely to respond to new therapies.

Through this cross-sector partnership, which will be managed through the Foundation for the NIH (FNIH), NIH and industry partners are sharing expertise and resources — $230 million — in an integrated governance structure that enables the best informed contributions to science from all participants. A critical component of the partnership is that industry partners have agreed to make the AMP data and analyses publicly accessible to the broad biomedical community. These pilot projects will set the stage for broadening AMP to other diseases and conditions.

AMP Partners

Government	Industry	Non-Profit Organizations
FDANIH	AbbVieBiogen Idec Bristol-Myers Squibb GlaxoSmithKline Johnson & Johnson Lilly Merck Pfizer Sanofi Takeda	Alzheimer’s AssociationAmerican Diabetes Association Lupus Foundation of America Foundation for the NIH Geoffrey Beene Foundation PhRMA Rheumatology Research Foundation USAgainstAlzheimer’s

Budget: 5 years [$230 Million (Rounded) Total Project Funding]

($Millions)	Total Project	Total NIH	Total Industry
Alzheimer’s Disease	129.5	67.6	61.9
Type 2 Diabetes	58.4	30.4	28
Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus	41.6	20.9	20.7
Total	229.5	118.9	110.6

The Opportunity

The Challenge

The Impact

Governance

Related Information

• News: NIH, industry and non-profits join forces to speed validation of disease targets, February 4, 2014
• Director’s Blog: Introducing AMP: the Accelerating Medicines Partnership
• Multimedia
• Statement by the President 

Sick from Your Stomach: Bacterial Changes May Trigger Diseases Like Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid Arthritis Fingers (Photo credit: david__jones)

From the 11 June 2012 ScienceDaily article

The billions of bugs in our guts have a newfound role: regulating the immune system and related autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, according to researchers at Mayo Clinic and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Larger-than-normal populations of specific gut bacteria may trigger the development of diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and possibly fuel disease progression in people genetically predisposed to this crippling and confounding condition, say the researchers, who are participating in the Mayo Illinois Alliance for Technology Based Healthcare.

The study is published in the April 2012 issue of PLoS ONE.

“A lot of people suspected that gut flora played a role in rheumatoid arthritis, but no one had been able to prove it because they couldn’t say which came first — the bacteria or the genes,” says senior author Veena Taneja, Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic immunologist. “Using genomic sequencing technologies, we have been able to show the gut microbiome may be used as a biomarker for predisposition.”…

 

…Researchers found that hormones and changes related to aging may further modulate the gut immune system and exacerbate inflammatory conditions in genetically susceptible individuals…

..

“The gut is the largest immune organ in the body,” says co-author Bryan White, Ph.D., director of the University of Illinois’ Microbiome Program in the Division of Biomedical Sciences and a member of the Institute for Genomic Biology. “Because it’s presented with multiple insults daily through the introduction of new bacteria, food sources and foreign antigens, the gut is continually teasing out what’s good and bad.”

The gut has several ways to do this, including the mucosal barrier that prevents organisms — even commensal or “good” bacteria — from crossing the lumen of the gut into the human body. However, when commensal bacteria breach this barrier, they can trigger autoimmune responses. The body recognizes them as out of place, and in some way this triggers the body to attack itself, he says….

Related articles

• Sick from your stomach: Bacterial changes may trigger diseases like rheumatoid arthritis (eurekalert.org)