10 drug companies that normally compete against each other, including giants Sanofi and Pfizer, will now cooperate not just with government researchers and non-profits, but with each other as part of a five-year, $230 million partnership to speed up the pace of new drug development in several key conditions Alzheimer's disease, type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus according to an announcement from the National Institutes of Health.
In the article, our director of chemical and pharmaceutical sciences, Dr. Josh Bloom, noted that though $230 million is "one-tenth the amount it takes to discover and develop a single drug," the early phases of drug research tend to be the least expensive, so this is a good start.