Obama Seeks to Fund Swifter Drug Development
by Clinton Gil in Health News on Feb 15, 2011
Officials have decided to start a billion-dollar government drug development center to help create medicines. This is after the Obama administration has become so concerned with the slow pace of new drugs that are produced by pharmaceuticals.
Moreover, this effort is done to support researches on new drugs, especially on promising discoveries such as treatment for Parkinson’s disease and depression. These cases would have led to clinical trials, but remains unexplored because a lot of companies neither the will nor the resources to do the procedures needed.
The job of the new center that will be named National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, is of the same kind that of a home seller who spruces up properties so that he can attract buyers in a down market. For the center, they will be doing as much research as it needs to do so that it can attract drug company investments.
The government’s initial budget for the new drug center is relatively small when it is compared to 2009’s budget. According to some estimates, the cost of bringing a single drug to market can exceed to $1 billion. An addition to the cost will largely dwell on researches.
Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of National Institutes of Health said, “None of this is intended to be competitive with the private sector.” He further explained, “The hope would be that any project that reaches the point of commercial appeal would be moved out of the academic support line and into the private sector.”
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