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 Neuroscience Steering Committee, led by the FNIH and its co-chairs Dr. Linda Brady, Dr. Hartmuth Kolb, and the emeritus co-chair Dr. Bill Potter, is bringing together experts in the field of neuroscience from industry, NIH, FDA, and academia to present progress to date, next steps, and key obstacles that need to be addressed in order to drive biomarker development in a multitude of neuroscience focus areas.
The Robert Whitney Newcomb Memorial Fund endows an annual lecture in neuroscience and one or more internships for high-school students at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).
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.