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New National Institutes of Health program will fund research for drugs to treat "rare and neglected diseases"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A unique new institute will look for ways to treat rare and neglected diseases and take the first and riskiest steps toward bringing new drugs to market, U.S. health officials said on Wednesday.
Congress has provided $24 million a year for five years to start the Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases Program, or TRND at the National Institutes of Health, acting NIH director Dr. Raynard Kington told reporters in a telephone briefing.
The program will use taxpayer money to get drugs through the most costly and dangerous phase of development, known as the “Valley of Death” because so many fail there.
It will publish details of failures as well as successes to guide other researchers, the NIH said. “Twenty-five to 30 million Americans suffer from rare or neglected diseases,” Kington said.
