Penn Medical School to create centre to study orphan diseases
Receives anonymous US$10m donation
Donations totalling US$10m, mainly from an anonymous donor, will allow the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in the US to create an interdisciplinary centre focused on discovering new treatments for orphan diseases.
Diseases are classified as orphan when they affect fewer than 200,000 people. There are approximately 7,000 orphan diseases affecting more than 25 million Americans. Many are caused by genetic mutations and are diagnosed in children.
The Penn Center for Orphan Disease Research and Therapy will lead an international, coordinated effort to eradicate these diseases.
It will also offer a robotically controlled drug-screening laboratory that will allow researchers to rapidly look for possible treatments in existing compound libraries.
Glen Gaulton, executive vice dean and chief scientific officer at the Perelman School, said the new centre would build strong collaborative relationships throughout Penn, and also with other leading academic medical centres, and public and private institutions.
‘There's simply nothing else like it,’ he said.