Google and AHA to fund $50m cardiovascular disease project
pharmafile | November 13, 2015 | News story | Medical Communications, Research and Development | American Heart Association, cardiovascular disease, google, heart disease
The American Heart Association and Google Life Sciences have announced a joint research collaboration to bring ‘unconventional thinking’ to the development of new treatments for cardiovascular disease.
Each organisation will invest $25 million over five years to support novel strategies to understand, prevent, and reverse coronary heart disease and its consequences, such as heart failure and sudden cardiac death.
This collaboration is the largest one-time research investment in AHA’s history. In early 2016, a joint leadership group made up of individuals from AHA and Google Life Sciences, will receive the full $50 million to design a program, assemble a cross-functional group of investigators, and lead all efforts towards further finding new causes and drivers of coronary heart disease.
Nancy Brown, chief executive of American Heart Association, says: “With its devastating human impact on countless generations of families, cardiovascular disease, and in particular coronary heart disease remains the greatest and deadliest global health challenge we face today.”
“By working together, AHA and Google Life Sciences will be able to serve as the catalyst for change and transformation in reducing the impact of coronary heart disease on people’s lives and alleviating this global burden. Just imagine if we could reverse coronary artery disease and restore the healthy heart muscle it destroys or, even better, prevent the whole process from beginning in the first place!”
The partners say the collaboration will provide the scientific community with channels to technical capabilities and insights offered by Google Life Sciences. With the unique opportunity to access such resources, the collaboration will expand research pathways and empower researchers to conceptualise and test new approaches.
Cardiovascular diseases are the number one cause of death globally, accounting annually for approximately 17 million deaths, or about one of every three deaths. Coronary heart disease itself is responsible for more than 7 million deaths annually.
Andy Conrad, chief executive of Google Life Sciences, says: “This is a fundamentally different kind of model for funding innovation. The team leader will be able to bring together clinicians, engineers, designers, basic researchers and other experts to think in new ways about the causes of coronary heart disease. We’re already imagining the possibilities when a team like that has access to the full resources of both Google Life Sciences and the AHA. We can’t wait to see what they discover.”
Yasmita Kumar
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