WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- The U.S. government is establishing a drug development center to take up the slack from fading private research, top officials say.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told The New York Times the pharmaceutical industry's research productivity has been declining for 15 years, "and it certainly doesn't show any signs of turning upward."
Many large drug firms, failing to find enough new medicines, are cutting back research. Discoveries that once would have led to clinical trials are going unexplored as they lose the will and the resources for the effort.
The NIH has traditionally focused on basic research, but the new center, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, will do as much research as is needed to draw drug company investment, Collins said.
It will take on tasks traditionally done by companies, including animal and human drug trials.
Under the plan, more than $700 million in research projects already in progress would be consolidated at the center. Collins hopes the prospect of finding new drugs will lead Congress to increase its financing well beyond $1 billion.
