Pharma majors in public-private partnership to help accelerate Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other brain disease research

Some of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies last Friday unveiled a ground-breaking collaboration to help speed research into new treatments diseases of the brain such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's to override competitive concerns and share the findings of their investigations.

A new database of more than 4,000 Alzheimer's disease patients who have participated in 11 industry-sponsored clinical trials was released by the Coalition Against Major Diseases (CAMD). This is the first database of combined clinical trials to be openly shared by pharmaceutical companies and made available to qualified researchers around the world.

It is also the first effort of its kind to create a voluntary industry data standard that will help accelerate new treatment research on brain disease, as patients with other related brain diseases are expected to be added. The level of detail and scope of this database will enable researchers to more accurately predict the true course of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, and other neuro-degenerative diseases, thereby enabling the design of more efficient clinical trials. Patient identifiers will not be included in the database, thereby ensuring patient privacy.