Speeding treatment development

Developing new medications is a slow and painstaking process. The pace can be especially frustrating for people with Alzheimer's and their families who are waiting for new treatment options.

To help accelerate discovery, the Coalition Against Major Diseases (CAMD), an alliance of pharmaceutical companies, nonprofit foundations and government advisers, has forged a first-of-its-kind partnership to share data from Alzheimer's clinical trials.

The CAMD has also collaborated with the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) to create data standards. Researchers anticipate that these data standards and the sharing of data from more than 6,500 study participants will speed development of more-effective therapies.