University Of Pennsylvania Announces Major Funding For Center For Orphan Disease Research
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - The University of Pennsylvania's medical school this week announced major funding for its Center for Orphan Disease Research and Therapy.
An "orphan disease" is one affecting fewer than 200,000 people and which therefore may attract less research interest. Nurturing that tiny flame is the center's task, says the medical school's chief scientific officer, Glen Gaulton.
"What the Center focuses one is, at one level, development of platform technologies, such as drug screening, development of animal models, clinical trials infrastructure that are necessary but that laboratories that, typically that work in orphan diseases, simply either don't have the resources for or the expertise."
Donors to the Center, often with a family interest in a particular disease, can use it to vet researchers whose success could be life-changing for a loved-one as well as others suffering from the same odd thing.
Reported by John Ostapkovich, KYW Newsradio
