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Pharma Firms Team Up For Mass. Neuroscience Consortium

They are usually rivals, but seven global pharmaceutical giants are teaming up to fund early-stage neuroscience research at Massachusetts universities.

As WBUR's Curt Nickisch reports for our Newscast unit:

The firms, which include Pfizer Inc., Abbott Laboratories and Biogen Idec, Inc., all have offices in the state. Each is pledging $250,000 at this point.

The money will go to the new Massachusetts Neuroscience Consortium. The idea is to share in the costs of basic research that each drug company might otherwise do separately.

The formal announcement will be made Wednesday at BIO, the global biotechnology convention being held in Boston this week.

State officials say this consortium shows how the local research cluster can speed up scientific discovery.

The money will be made available to research institutions in Massachusetts through grants, with applications beginning this fall.

This program aired on June 20, 2012. The audio for this program is not available.

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