On April 24th, the Tools of Science-company APL (Apotek Produktion & Laboratorier AB) organized a seminar called Tailored drugs for people with rare diseases - personalized medicine, orphan drugs and extemporaneous pharmaceuticals. The seminar focused on how patients with special needs can get effective and individually adapted pharmaceutical treatment.
Despite the fact that an estimated 500 000 patients suffer from rare diseases in Sweden alone, these patients are less likely to receive effective treatment, due to the lack of available efficient drugs. Today approximately 8 000 diseases are considered rare diseases, i.e. affecting less than 1 in 2 000 Europeans, and about 250 are added each year. Thus, the unmet medical needs are enormous, with extensive challenges for biotech and pharmaceutical companies in this field.
Madeleine Wallding opened the seminar with a presentation about the ongoing work within the National Pharmaceutical Strategy, and Kerstin Westermark described how the Committee for Orphan Medical Product (COMP) views orphan drugs and personalized medicine. Erik Brouwer described how Sobi has adapted its organization to develop orphan drugs as effectively as possible, and Anders Waas from TikoMed talked about the market for pharmaceuticals for rare diseases. The fantastic progress in development of antibody against HER2-positive breast cancer was described by Jan-Olov Sandberg from Roche, and Petra Ekerot from APL showed examples of how extemporaneous pharmaceuticals can improve the treatment of children with rare diseases. Medical doctor Rolf Zetterström described the clinical reality for treatment of children with genetic hereditary metabolic diseases, at the Karolinska University Hospital.
- The topic of this year's seminar is extremely important, and something that APL really is passionate about. Much of what we do is to help patients with special needs, either by develop or manufacture orphan drugs in close collaboration with our client companies, or by manufacture extemporaneous pharmaceuticals according to a physician’s prescription and health care needs, says Michael Brobjer, Director Business area Life Science & Marketing. We are proud to host a seminar with such an exciting topic, and with so many remarkable and inspiring presentations.
More information: www.apl.se