AMP Partnership Launched

As a result of technological revolutions in genomics, imaging, and in other areas, researchers have been able to identify many changes in genes, proteins, and other molecules that predispose individuals to disease and influence disease progression.

While researchers have identified thousands of biological changes that hold promise as biomarkers and drug targets, only a small number have been pursued. Choosing the wrong target can result in failures late in the development process, costing time, money, and ultimately lives.

To address the issue, NIH, along with ten biopharmaceutical companies, and several non-profit organizations have launched a partnership called “The Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP) to determine which biological targets of disease are most likely to respond to new therapies and then characterize biological indicators of disease known as biomarkers.

Through the Foundation for NIH (FNIH), the partners will invest more than $250 million over five years on initial projects. These projects will focus on Alzheimer’s disease, Type 2 diabetes, and autoimmune disorders to include rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

For example, the Type 2 diabetes project will build a knowledge portal of DNA sequence functional genomic and epigenomic information along with clinical data from studies on Type 2 diabetes and the heart and kidney complications that might result.

The collection of curated and collated information in this portal will enable researchers to identify the most promising therapeutic targets for diabetes from the growing mountain of potentially relevant data.

AMP partners have developed research plans and are sharing costs, expertise, and resources in an integrated governance structure to enable the best informed contributions to science to come from all participants.

A critical element of the partnership is that the data and analyses generated must be publicly available to the broad biomedical community. The three to five year milestone driven pilot projects in the disease areas could set the stage for broadening AMP to other diseases and conditions.

“Patients and their caregivers are relying on science to find better and faster ways to detect and treat disease and improve their quality of life”, said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D, PhD. “Currently, we are investing a great deal of money and time in avenues with high failure rates while patients and their families wait. All sectors of the biomedical field agree that new approaches are sorely needed.”

He added” The good news is that recent dramatic advances in basic research are opening new windows of opportunity for therapeutics. However, this challenge is beyond the scope of any one of us and it’s time to work together in new ways to increase our collective odds of success. We believe this partnership is an important first step and represents the most sweeping effort to date to tackle this vital issue.”