Where the pharmaceutical industries do not arrive, the Italian Medicines Agency (Aifa) takes care of it.
this is the meaning of the call for funding for independent drug research promoted by the agency which received 360 requests this year. In the two previous editions, the initiative has already financed 105 projects in often mistreated fields, from rare diseases to comparisons between different therapies, for a total of 65 million. «The projects we finance cover sectors that have limited commercial interest but a large impact on the population», explains Giuseppe Traversa, AIFA manager for research and development, «for example in 2006 we approved a study on the effects of using a chemotherapy drug for nine weeks instead of 52. Obviously, no industry would have an interest in doing so». The research projects are chosen within three specific areas: "Orphan drugs for rare diseases", for which 122 applications were received this year, "Comparison between drugs and between therapeutic strategies for pathologies and clinical conditions with a high impact on public health" (100 applications) and "Pharmacoepidemiological studies on the benefit-risk profile of treatments and studies on the impact of strategies to improve the appropriateness of care" (138 applications). Pharmacy News of 30/01/2008 N. 1 JANUARY 2008 p. 4
