This year has proven to be a veritable cliff-hanger for the world of biomedicine. At the same time that the US government stands poised on the brink of the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’, pharmaceutical companies are stumbling with the industry’s ‘patent cliff’ and academic researchers face the looming ‘funding cliff’. But not everything in 2012 was so dire, with dozens of new drugs to hit worldwide markets and countless discoveries made to enable the next generation of medicines. What follows are a set of ‘Cliff’s notes’ to the year that was for the field.
Brain gain: The US Department of Health and Human Services published a draft framework on 9 January laying out a national plan for fighting Alzheimer’s disease. The document, which was finalized in May 2012, calls for effectively preventing and treating the disorder by 2025. A month later, the EU’s Joint Programme in Neurodegenerative Disease Research launched a strategy to improve coordination between research and funding efforts on such diseases.