Non-profit organization Prize4Life, which seeks to accelerate the discovery of treatments and a cure for ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), has launched a database, PRO-ACT, to collate data on ALS clinical trials. Prize4Life created the database with the Massachusetts General Hospital, a top US hospital, with financing from the ALS Therapy Alliance, a US NPO. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) was one of the companies that gave donations for the database.
Prize4Life said, "PRO-ACT is a powerful tool that merges data from existing publicly and privately conducted ALS clinical trials and makes these data widely available for research, creating an invaluable resource for accelerating discovery in the field of ALS."
"With the creation of the PRO-ACT database, Prize4Life and the NCRI have given companies like ours cause to rethink priorities and strategies regarding ALS, since the abundant clinical and patient data contained within it will help us develop viable Phase II and Phase III treatments for ALS," said Biogen Idec medical director Dr. Doug Kerr.
Pro-ACT contains more than 8,500 fully de-identified unique clinical trial patient records, including demographic, lab, medical history, functional scores, and other data elements. The dataset currently includes both placebo and, in most instances, treatment-arm data from 18 late stage (Phase II/III) ALS clinical trials, resulting in over eight million longitudinally collected data points.
Prize4Life science director Dr. Neta Zach said that the database could help answer research questions, such as which ALS patient subgroups can be expected to live longer, and what were the differences in the disease's progress between men and women.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 9, 2012
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