Recent news
November 2011
NIH working to enhance treatment options for global health diseases
November 17, 2011 -- The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is launching a new set of projects through its Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND) program to develop drugs to treat rare and neglected diseases.
"These projects reinforce NIH's commitment to translational research and the need to accelerate potential new treatments that benefit patients with rare and neglected diseases," said NIH Director Francis Collins "It is wonderful that TRND scientists and their collaborators can advance such promising projects that may have otherwise remained stalled due to a lack of scientific or fiscal resources."
Two of the projects will impact global health efforts. The first is an effort to find a compound for treatment of neonatal herpes simplex virus. New treatments for neonatal herpes could help infants in the United States, as well as developing countries, where rates of infection are high. The second project aims to develop a compound for treatment of Schistosomiasis, a neglected tropical disease caused by parasitic worms that affects more than 200 million people worldwide.
TRND was created to help promote development of new drugs to treat rare and neglected diseases by connecting research discoveries to the actual development and testing of new drugs. One of TRND’s unique practices is that it will publicize both the successes and failures of its efforts so other members of the drug development community can benefit. TRND operates by collaborating with academic, government, biopharmaceutical and patient advocacy groups and focusing on projects that have the potential to treat diseases currently lacking treatment options.
