Monday, November 17, 2008

Children’s Hospital gets $25M for rare disease research

By Mass High Tech Staff

A foundation has given the Boston Children’s Hospital $25 million to research rare diseases. The hospital reports that the Manton Foundation has given it the award to establish a unique center to research so-called orphan diseases. These are ailments that affect less than 200,000 people in the United States. This new Manton Center will be under the Children’s Hospital’s Division of Genetics.

Research into these orphan diseases has been hampered because of the lack of funding, stated Children’s Hospital CEO James Mandell.  The ailments are so infrequent that they don’t attract significant attention from researchers. Accordingly, the exact diagnoses for them are either extremely limited or nonexistent. The new Manton Center will create “a superhighway for discovery” to deliver insights into the biological causes of these diseases and help create better diagnoses and treatments, he said in a statement.

These orphan diseases mostly afflict children ages two and under. Of these 6,000 known rare diseases, half cause motor, sensory or intellectual problems. About 20 percent result in chronic pain for the sufferer. The money will support scientists from Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School to develop diagnoses and treatments.

Children’s Hospital Boston is one of the largest pediatric research hospitals in the world. This is one of the largest such awards ever given to the institution, according to a press release. The Manton Foundation was created by Sir Edwin Manton to support philanthropic efforts.