Pfizer: Rare Disease Consortium Partnership

Pfizer: Rare Disease Consortium Partnership

September 25, 2014
256px-Cambio_de_color_a_diferente_pHs

Kevin Lee, Chief Scientific Officer and Head of Rare Diseases Unit, Pfizer, announces September 25th the official launch in the United Kingdom of the inaugural scientific meeting of the Rare Disease Consortium (RDC). RDC is a 5-year partnership between Pfizer and the Global Medical Excellence Cluster (GMEC) partners. The academia-pharm partnership is announced in May 2014. RDC is established to join together patient groups, scientists, physicians, and academia to both identify and collaboratively develop new treatments for rare diseases. Rare diseases impact approximately 3.5 million people in the U.K.

GMEC, a not-for-profit located in London, is formed by five UK universities for the purpose of developing a collaboration of commercial organizations, academia, and the UK’s National Health Service Trusts to accelerate progress in Translational Medicine and to increase the UK’s competitiveness in biomedical research. The GMEC university members are:

University of Cambridge

Imperial College London

King’s College London

University of Oxford

University College London

Queen Mary University of London.

GMEC is based on a business cluster model, which is defined as a geographic concentration or hotspot/hub for growth, investment, research, and innovation. The GMEC/Pfizer collaboration highlights the strength and importance of an academia-pharma alliance in moving forward for finding and developing new treatments for rare diseases.

The GMEC/Pfizer Rare Disease collaboration is named this month as one of the “Top 7 Worldwide Academic Alliances” by FierceBiotech.

Please Note: “Cambio de color a diferente pHs” by Rubashkyn (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0] | Wikimedia Commons.

http://orphandruganaut.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/pfizer-rare-disease-consortium-partnership/

Any idea what this collaborative team will be working on in the near future?

I presume it will be Rarediseases in General, or a focus on Specific disease may well be a future focus