The NIH starts spending $1.5 billion in new Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neuro-technologies (BRAIN) projects

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NIH Starts to Spend $4.8 Bil­lion in “Extra” Cures Drug Research Mon­ey (P&T Community):

“The Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH) launched 110 new brain research projects in the fis­cal year end­ing last Sep­tem­ber (2017) with the first por­tion of the $1.5 bil­lion over 10 years it will hope­ful­ly receive from the 21st Cen­tu­ry Cures Act, which spread a total of $4.8 bil­lion over four NIH pro­grams. That is mon­ey over and above the NIH annu­al appro­pri­a­tion from Con­gress. The oth­er three “Inno­va­tion Funds” are: Pre­ci­sion Med­i­cine, Can­cer Moon­shot, and Regen­er­a­tive Medicine.

The $1.5 bil­lion in new Brain Research through Advanc­ing Inno­v­a­tive Neu­ro-tech­nolo­gies (BRAIN) research mon­ey seems par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant giv­en the announce­ment in Jan­u­ary that Pfiz­er was end­ing its Alzheimer’s research pro­gram after years of fruit­less devel­op­ment efforts, which have plagued oth­er com­pa­nies as well…A prime exam­ple is the “All of Us” ini­tia­tive, which is the pri­ma­ry focus of the Pre­ci­sion Med­i­cine Ini­tia­tive (PMI). While the FDA is using Cures mon­ey to aggre­gate patient post-mar­ket­ing data, the NIH will be col­lect­ing patient data in order to learn about med­ical con­di­tions and to assem­ble a crit­i­cal mass of poten­tial clin­i­cal tri­al par­tic­i­pants. The NIH is part­ner­ing with five com­pa­nies to cre­ate a par­tic­i­pant tech­nol­o­gy center.

“Get­ting all these part­ners on board would have been near­ly impos­si­ble had not the Cures Act includ­ed some­thing called Oth­er Trans­ac­tions Author­i­ty for PMI, mak­ing it pos­si­ble for NIH to move for­ward with unprece­dent­ed speed and flex­i­bil­i­ty to car­ry out beta test­ing of all the many com­po­nents, and now a planned launch in the spring of 2018,” NIH Direc­tor Fran­cis Collins, MD, PhD, told the House Ener­gy and Com­merce Com­mit­tee on Novem­ber 30, 2017. “It will also be a plat­form where many clin­i­cal tri­als can also get start­ed because these par­tic­i­pants will have been pre-con­sent­ed for con­tact to see if they would be inter­est­ed in tak­ing part in a clin­i­cal tri­al, say, for dia­betes or Alzheimer’s risks.”

News in Context

• NIH out­lines glob­al research agen­da to tack­le brain disorders–from cog­ni­tive impair­ments to depres­sion and dementia
• With phar­ma exit­ing Alzheimer’s research, new hope (and urgency) seen in the com­bi­na­tion of brain train­ing and tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS)
• 10 neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment and brain health
• Pub­lic Brain Health vs. Pri­vate Brain Research Funds: How the NFL tried to influ­ence NIH studies
• Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright
• Ses­sion on the future of brain health at the 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: