Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Fund

The Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act, signed into law in 2002, calls for the Foundation for NIH to raise funds to enable testing and relabeling of on-patent drugs that are approved for adult use and used to treat children, but have not been tested for treatment of children.

The need is great—in 2002 it was estimated that at least 75 percent of drugs regularly prescribed to children in the United States were not labeled for use in children. To date, the Food and Drug Administration and the Secretary of Health and Human Services have referred nine drugs to the Foundation for NIH.

As of Dec. 31, 2006, the foundation raised more than $4.2 million towards this program. This year, the foundation board of directors approved the allocation of these funds to a study being conducted on baclofen, used to treat spasticity in children with cerebral palsy.

To date, funders of the foundation’s Best Pharmaceuticals for Children program include Abbott, AstraZeneca, the Boehringer Ingelheim Cares Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly and Company Foundation, the Merck Company Foundation, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Pharmacia Corporation, Pfizer Inc, Roche, Sanofi-Aventis, and Wyeth, as well as individual contributors.