The Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health on Wednesday unveiled an initiative to back the FDA extend swifter decisions regarding the safety and effectiveness of new products and procedures that flow from advanced research.

The new partnership is revealed to boost the development of testing and other tools that FDA regulators require in order to assess drugs and other products coming from fields such as genomics, nanotechnology and stem cell therapy.

A part of the initiative is a grants program funded at over $6.75 million over 3 years, $6 million of it from NIH's Common Fund.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg compared the imbalance to the arms of a rower. "We have allowed the arm of regulatory science to become weak and underdeveloped", Hamburg revealed at a news briefing.

In addition, the NIH-FDA corroboration includes the formation of a six-member council of top scientists from both agencies in a view to ensure that the latest science is incorporated into the regulatory review process.