NCATS's nine lives

The NIH's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) has awarded a total of $12.7 million to 9 academic research groups to repurpose compounds from 5 pharma partners in the center's Discovering New Therapeutic Uses for Existing Molecules program.

According to Christine Colvis, director of the program, the 9 projects were selected from about 160 applicants through an NIH peer review process, and the awards for the first year range from about $500,000 to $3 million (see "NCATS's first repurposing round"). Colvis said that the academic partners would own any new IP generated by the partnership, and the pharmas would have options to license that IP...