The US National Institute of Health's National Center for Advancing Translational Science has announced that five more pharmaceutical companies have joined its program to find new uses for early-stage drugs that did not make it through the full pipeline, reports ScienceInsider's Jocelyn Kaiser. This expansion brings the number of compounds NCTAS is testing to 58, she adds. Abbott Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, and Janssen Pharmaceuticals are joining the initial three partners, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Eli Lilly. The jury is still out on whether the program will accomplish its stated goals — some pharma experts are skeptical, while others think there is potential, but are worried that the legal agreements between the companies and the academics doing the research are unclear, Kaiser says.
Daily Scan's sister publication GenomeWeb Daily News has more here.