Alzheimer’s Association Joins Global Consortium to Strengthen the Drug Pipeline for Brain Diseases
Today, the Alzheimer’s Association announced its leadership role in the Neurodegeneration Medicines Acceleration Program (Neuro-MAP), which plans to uncover promising drugs for degenerative brain diseases in pharmaceutical company libraries and put them into early-stage clinical trials. Many potential drugs are languishing in laboratories because the companies who own them have moved in other directions. By identifying these projects and moving them forward, Neuro-MAP aims to bring these drugs closer to the people who desperately need them.
Partners in Neuro-MAP are: Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society (UK), ALS Association, Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, Motor Neurone Disease Association, MRC Technology, Northern Health Science Alliance, and Parkinson’s UK. The consortium represents more than 50 million people living with neurodegenerative conditions worldwide.
Neuro-MAP will ask pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to propose projects to the consortium. The Neuro-MAP partner organizations will decide which projects to take on by evaluating patient needs, scientific excellence and commercial potential. Projects taken on by Neuro-MAP remain the property of the industry partner, but the consortium will share in a proportion of the revenue generated if the product goes on the market. These funds will be reinvested in additional research.
Consortium program manager, MRC Technology, will augment the initial investment from Neuro-MAP partners by seeking co-investment from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, social investors, and venture philanthropists. As a result, the current target for total annual investment is in the region of $48 million.
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