Global pharma giants to pool data to accelerate Alzheimer treatment

After years of failed attempts by individual pharma giants to find effective treatments for Alzheimer's disease, for the first time a dozen competing drug companies are pooling in their research data to get a breakthrough in what affects the most mysterious and complicated organ of the human organ-the brain.

There are an estimated 30 million people globally suffering from Alzheimer's and that number is likely to increase to over 100 million by 2050. Currently the cost of treating Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases worldwide costs as much as $315 billion annually.

A group of dozen pharmaceutical companies have come together for the first time and shared data on patients enrolled in their clinical trials for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases in order to get a breakthrough after having failed individually to find a treatment for the brain disorders.

In the first phase, database of more than 4,000 Alzheimer's disease patients who have participated in 11 failed clinical trials of AstraZeneca, Sanofi-Aventis, Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Pfizer, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline were released yesterday that will be openly shared by pharmaceutical companies as well as qualified researchers worldwide.

It is the first effort of its kind to create a voluntary industry data standard that will help accelerate new treatment research on brain diseases and patients with other related brain diseases are expected to be added.

Patients' identities will not be revealed in order to ensure their privacy.