NIH's blueprint for translation

In 2009, the NIH established a grant program, the Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network, to aid the development of neurology therapeutics. That program has now announced its first awards to academic researchers and one company-Trevena Inc.-that have compounds or scaffolds for neurological disorders including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, depression, hearing loss, age-related macular degeneration, optic neuropathy and stroke.

BNN is a component of the NIH's Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, "a consortium of 16 NIH institutes and centers that put dollars from their budget into a common pot of money" to fund early stage drug development, said Rebecca Farkas, program director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)...