Lilly will also provide Neurocrine with access to select chemical libraries for high-throughput screening against noncollaborative targets. Lilly will receive milestone payments plus royalties for any compounds that come out of these libraries, as well as have preferred partner status for compounds that come from these libraries that are within Lilly 's strategic focus. Lilly is a leader in drug development and has proven strengths in drug discovery and development for nervous system and metabolic disorders. We believe that this new collaboration provides the expertise and resources to move our programs in obesity and Alzheimer's disease forward aggressively and ensure that our discoveries will have the greatest opportunity for commercialization. Obesity Preclinical studies indicate that CRF and a newly identified neuropeptide, urocortin, act as central regulators of both appetite and metabolism.
Obesity is the most common nutritional disorder in Western societies.
As many as three in 10 adult Americans weigh at least 20 percent in excess of their ideal body weight, with 35 million people in the United States characterized as clinically obese. Increased body weight is a significant public health problem because it is associated with a number of serious diseases, including Type II diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia and several cancers. Alzheimer's Disease Neurocrine scientists have found that there are significant decreases in CRF levels in the brain areas that are affected in Alzheimer's disease. Reduced CRF levels may be associated with the learning and memory impairments that occur in the disease. According to the National Alzheimer's Association, in 1994 more than four million people in the United States suffered from Alzheimer's disease.