MedGenome today announced a partnership with Emmes to support the advancement of public health and biopharmaceutical innovation, aimed at accelerating breakthrough treatments, powered by human genomics, for rare disease patients.
A statement from MedGenome quoted Dr Vedam Ramprasad, CEO, MedGenome Labs, as saying, “Few people realise that India and South Asia have the world’s largest population of people affected by rare and inherited disease. Given the high unmet need of these patients and families, we are dedicated to expand support and opportunities for the rare disease community in South Asia to contribute to, and benefit from, the substantial treatment advances being made in rare disease globally. Rare disease clinical trials face substantial recruitment and regulatory challenges globally. Our rare disease alliance with Emmes is positioned to directly mitigate these challenges and is a natural extension of MedGenome’s substantial investment to support rare disease patients and clinicians in South Asia.”
Apart from it, the statement also quoted Dr Christine Dingivan, Chief Executive Officer, Emmes, who said, “This is an exciting opportunity to partner with the leading genetic testing laboratory in India and South Asia to use our collective expertise to help bring faster and more innovative treatments to patients around the world who are suffering from rare diseases and desperately awaiting new therapies. The unmatched potential to build comprehensive and curated disease-specific cohorts will leverage the power of large data sets to design smarter research protocols and to reduce the time it takes to identify rare disease patients for clinical trials. Ultimately, we hope this will result in more successful treatment outcomes.”
Dr Christine also added, “During its recognition of Rare Disease Day on 5th March, 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) noted, patients with rare diseases often have few or no treatment options. In 2020, we continued to see significant progress in the development of treatments for rare diseases, also known as orphan products. In 2020, the FDA approved 32 novel drugs and biologics that had an orphan drug designation.”