To tackle the human health challenges that face the world today, the FNIH develops collaborations with top experts from government, industry, academia and the not-for-profit sector and provides a neutral environment where we can work productively toward a common goal.
This workshop aimed at creating alignment among scientific stakeholders including the FDA, the NIH, the biopharmaceutical industry, academic researchers and patient groups regarding a proposed framework for determining the levels of evidence required to qualify biomarkers for use in drug development.
Sarcopenia 2 seeks to establish evidence-based cut-points for muscle mass and strength and determine their predictive validity for clinically meaningful outcomes (such as mobility, fractures, hospitalization and death); evaluate relative strength as a discriminator for mobility limitation and incident disability; and explore the potential usefulness of sarcopenia as a clinical endpoint in randomized clinical trials.
The Sarcopenia 1 project launched in 2010 and aimed to establish the first evidence-based definition of sarcopenia (muscle weakness), which is still not recognized as a medical condition.
The Biomarkers Consortium - Osteoarthritis Biomarkers Project is a $3.4 million study aimed at determining which biomarkers have greater prognostic ability to measure early progression of structural and symptomatic changes in the joint over time and which are likely to predict treatment response better than the radiographic measurement of narrowing of joint space in knee OA patients. These new biomarkers are candidates for follow-on studies for evaluation and use in regulatory decision-making.