The NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) has launched its new Toolkit for Patient-Focused Therapy Development which provides a vast collection of online resources that can help patient advocacy groups advance through the process of therapy development. The Toolkit includes resources that have been developed primarily for the rare diseases community to facilitate therapeutics R & D. Since early 2016, NCATS has worked with a diverse group of rare diseases community partners to conduct an extensive analysis of available tools. Their hard labor defined, characterized and organized resources in a centralized portal that can be helpful to all patient groups, regardless of how far along in the research and development process they may be.
The new toolkit includes, but is not limited to:
Getting Started that focuses on learning how investigational therapies are developed; why it is important for patients and their advocates to engage throughout the process; and how to build effective relationships with other stakeholders.
Discovery Tools that aid in community organization and the prioritization of activities during the early stages of development.
Preparing for Clinical Trials Tools focused on getting patient communities ready for clinical trials.
Clinical Trials and FDA Review Tools to help connect patients to clinical trials, and to take part in the complex FDA regulatory-review process.
After FDA Approval Tools to help formulate the plan for integrating a newly-approved therapy into clinical care.
Take the time to explore the deep layers of nested links and the information they’ll take you to. NCATS has certainly produced an extremely useful, high-quality tool! What this new tool needs now — is for thousands of members of the rare diseases community to USE IT!