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What We Do

We have a number of laser-focused, high-impact programs that allow us to educate stakeholders about the barriers, amplify solutions that could pave the way to progress, and create opportunities for key leaders to come together and get things done.

We work alongside patient advocates, researchers, investors, and policymakers across all sectors of the medical research and development system to achieve the following strategic goals through our programs:

COLLABORATIONS: Stimulate Innovative Collaborations  across all sectors — academia, government, industry, investors, and nonprofits.

  • Partnering for Cures. Brings non-traditional allies together to collaborate and create new business approaches vital to turning breakthroughs into life-saving therapies.
  • The Research Acceleration and Innovation Network (TRAIN). Connects dozens of disease research organizations with results–oriented approaches in an effort to amplify best practices, share resources, and promote innovative models.
  • Venture Philanthropy Partnership Analysis. Lays out a rigorous quantitative and qualitative analysis and evaluation of the extent and nature of nonprofit/for-profit relationships in medical research in an effort to elevate their profile and foster increased interest in cross-sector collaboration
  • Intellectual Property (IP) Primer. Looks carefully at IP challenges that hold back collaboration and spotlights innovative, effective solutions for sharing data while protecting interests of research stakeholders.
     

PATIENTS: Increase patient engagement in research and optimize use of patient data.

  • Patients Helping Doctors (PHD). In fighting disease, patience is not a virtue —patients are. Through PHD, we focus our efforts on unlocking patient information —medical records and biological material such as tissue, blood, and DNA —and making these available to clinical researchers in a meaningful way.
  • Think Research. Still Thinking Research report calls for integrating research into the health information technology framework to achieve earlier and better diagnosis and more effective prevention strategies and cures.
  • Banking on Trust. This whitepaper outlines the barriers to biobanking and spotlights creative approaches for the collection and application of biological materials in research to advance the search for new diagnostic and therapeutic tools.  
     

PROCESS AND POLICY: Improve research process and policy to support efficient development and approval of new therapies.

  • Science and Process at the FDA. Identifies actionable and practical strategies needed to improve the regulatory system so it can keep pace with medical and technological advances.
  • Translational Research at the NIH. Ensures that translational research is a priority at the NIH and across other research institutions through a wide range of efforts aimed at engaging innovators and investors in bridging this critical gap in drug development.
  • Advocacy Best Practices. Examines the elements of the HIV/AIDS advocacy movement and its impact on medical research through the report, Back to Basics: HIV/AIDS Advocacy as a Model for Affecting Change.

CAPITAL: Facilitate greater access and more strategic allocation of capital to support results-driven medical research. 

  • Giving Smarter. Helps ensure private capital is wisely directed to advance medical progress. Elements of the toolkit include Getting Started, an overview of the R&D process and players, and Giving Smarter,which provides a framework for evaluating giving decisions and preferences.
  • Financial Innovations Lab. Will bring together innovators from a variety of industries in a workshop to design and vet potential financing and research models that provide access and direct capital to early-stage, high-risk research.