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.
The Sayer Vision Research Lecture and Award funds an annual presentation delivered by an investigator conducting outstanding research in the area of vision research or related fields. It also provides a grant to support the research of a promising independent investigator in the early stage of his or her career in the Division of Intramural Research whose work is closely related to aspects of vision research.
The Age-Related Eye Disease Study 2 (AREDS2) examined the effects of vitamin and mineral supplementation on the progression of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which is one of the leading causes of blindness in the United States. Funds raised by the FNIH support the development of a genetic repository for the study, facilitating deeper analyses of the results.
The Osteoarthritis Initiative was a public-private collaboration to improve the efficiency of drug development and clinical trials for the treatment of osteoarthritis, which affects more than 30 million adults in the United States.
Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), Systemic Lupus Erythematosus & Related Autoimmune Disorders is an initiative of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP), which is a multi-sector, pre-competitive partnership among government, industry, and nonprofit organizations, the goal of which is to harness collective capabilities, scale and resources toward improving current efforts to develop new therapies for complex, heterogeneous diseases.
The goal of this three-year project is to validate the novel radiographic measures, MRI measures and biochemical markers from the Phase I OA Biomarkers Consortium Project, and to qualify those biomarkers via the formal regulatory qualification process with both the FDA and EMA.
The Biomarkers Consortium’s TARGET Biomarker Study seeks to utilize validated proteomic biomarkers of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) disease activity and inflammation to categorize baseline and disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD)-associated changes in vascular inflammation in RA patients.
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.
The Biomarkers Consortium’s Bone Quality Project aims to evaluate and to identify biomarkers of bone strength and quality changes by analyzing pooled imaging and biochemical data from multiple clinical studies to allow definition of better clinical endpoints.