Creation of novel medicines and better patient care for the future in an ecosystem

 ORION CORPORATION                    PRESS RELEASE                 17 SEPTEMBER 2018

Creation of novel medicines and better patient care for the future in an ecosystem

Orion Corporation has together with selected university research groups and other companies assembled a New Modalities Ecosystem supported by funding from Business Finland. The new ecosystem is unique multidiscipline collaboration combining high level academic knowledge with drug discovery and development.

The aim of this New Modalities Ecosystem is enable improved understanding of disease pathology related to the symptoms and disease progression and better treatments by applying large molecular drugs and diagnostic tools as well as digital wearable patient tools for disease symptom recording. This Ecosystem combines in a unique way high-level academic research with industrial drug research and development. The Ecosystem participants include in addition to Orion, University of Turku, University of Helsinki, University of Eastern Finland, Folkhälsan as well as the companies PerkinElmer, Syrinx Bioanalytics, AdmeScope, Petsofi, Forendo Pharma and InMe.

Orion intends to provide better personalized treatments for patients and develop new competences in addition to the strong know-how in small-molecular drug development. Monogenic rare disease may provide a more straight forward and rational way of identifying suitable drug target proteins and disease mechanisms as well as implementation of new treatment technologies. There is also a great need to identify patient subpopulations with a disease and better understanding of the disease symptoms as well as continuous monitoring of the symptoms (digital 24/7 monitoring technologies). Identified treatment target proteins and developed technologies may be applicable also in more common diseases. We will initially focus on rare diseases which are part of the Finnish disease heritage, where excellent genetic and clinical research as well as collaboration networks have been established in Finland.

The scientists participating in the better disease understanding part of the Ecosystem include Academy Professor Anu Suomalainen-Wartiovaara, University of Helsinki, and Professor Anna-Elina Lehesjoki (Folkhälsan, University of Helsinki, Faculty of Medicine and HiLife). They are internationally acknowledged scientists in medical research and their disease mechanistic work has created significant new know knowledge in inherited diseases involving neuronal and muscle degeneration.. Professor Reetta Kälviäinen (University of Eastern Finland and Kuopio Epilepsy Center, Kuopio University Hospital) and Professor  Pasi Karjalainen (Department of Applied Physics, University of Eastern Finland), and epidemiologist  Laura Laakso, Petsofi, participate in the Ecosystem by developing  digital wearable patient tools for the measurement and recording of disease symptoms in patients, in relation to the progress of disease and measured biomarkers. PerkinElmer participates in the development of diagnostic tools.