NCRR support to the NIH wide Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases Program (TRND) being coordinated by NHGRI. TRND program is part of a congressionally mandated program to encourage and speed the development of new drugs for rare and neglected diseases. This unique program creates a drug development pipeline within the NIH and is specifically intended to stimulate research collaborations with academic scientists, non-profit organizations, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies working on rare and neglected illnesses. The TRND program provides an opportunity to partner with and gain access to rare and neglected disease drug development capabilities, expertise, and clinical/regulatory resources in a collaborative environment with the goal of moving promising therapeutics into human clinical trials. TRND uses a solicitation application and evaluation process to select collaborators. If the drug originator applicant is selected the applicant?s team will partner with TRND staff to mutually agree on a joint project plan and to implement the drug development program. The applicant investigators provide the drug project starting points and ongoing biological/disease expertise throughout the project.
