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 Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium (BGTC) is a developing public-private partnership dedicated to making gene therapy a reality for people with rare genetic diseases affecting populations too small to be viable from the current commercial perspective. Building on the successful Accelerating Medicines Partnership model, this program will focus on developing an operational playbook that invokes the use of streamlined templates, master regulatory files, and uniform production processes. It is anticipated that following a pilot phase of 4-6 test cases, a pathway toward the commercial viability of these therapies will be found. This may ultimately have a tremendously positive impact on the larger field of gene therapy if it moves more broadly into the era of genome editing.
The Accelerating Medicines Partnership–Schizophrenia is the first neuropsychiatric project of the landmark Accelerating Medicines Partnership program managed by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health.
Carol-Ann Harris has established the CarMollNat Endowment in memory of her beloved family members. The Endowment is committed to support research and science for the major forms of Muscular Dystrophy (MD) and neurogenetic disease.
In 2016, the AMP Executive Committee approved the planning of an AMP effort to confront the challenges presented by Parkinson’s disease (PD). This complements current efforts in the areas of Alzheimer’s disease, type 2 diabetes and the autoimmune disorders of rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus). A critical component of this partnership is that all members have agreed to make the AMP Parkinson’s disease (AMP PD) data and analyses publicly available to the broad biomedical community.
The Partnership for Accelerating Cancer Therapies (PACT) is a five-year public-private research collaboration totaling $220 million launched by the National Institutes of Health, the FNIH and 12 leading pharmaceutical companies as part of the Cancer Moonshot. PACT will initially focus on efforts to identify, develop and validate robust biomarkers — standardized biological markers of disease and treatment response — to advance new immunotherapy treatments that harness the immune system to attack cancer. The partnership will be managed by the FNIH.
The Accelerating Medicines Partnership Alzheimer’s Disease Project (AMP-AD) is a precompetitive partnership among government, industry, and nonprofit organizations that focuses on discovering novel, clinically relevant therapeutic targets and on developing biomarkers to help validate existing therapeutic targets.
The FNIH Biomarkers Consortium and FDA hosted a workshop to provide a Framework for Defining the Evidentiary Criteria for Surrogate Endpoint Qualification on July 30-31, 2018. The workshop aimed to create alignment of the biomedical community and regulators on the levels of evidence required to qualify biomarkers for use in drug development, with an emphasis on surrogate endpoints and specific clinical outcome measures.
The ctDNA Quality Control Materials project seeks to develop a set of nationally recognized standards to enable the production of suitable quality control materials that can be submitted for FDA clearance for widespread use in ctDNA testing. Once successfully developed and disseminated, these quality control materials will provide confidence in interpretation of ctDNA biomarker assay results, paving the way for more effective clinical research, therapeutic decision-making, regulatory evaluation, and reimbursement applications.
The Cancer Steering Committee (CSC) Scientific Symposium reviews advances in the field of biomarker and regulatory science that are relevant to the development of new public-private partnerships for precompetitive biomarkers. This review assists the CSC with planning future public- private partnerships in this area.