Healthcare provider Centene Corp. has pledged $100 million to Washington University in St. Louis to help lead its efforts in finding treatments for breast cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and obesity, the school announced on Monday.
Over the next 10 years, the university’s School of Medicine will use the funds to spur its Personalized Medicine Initiative and strengthen resources at more than a dozen of its centers and institutes.
“We will be bringing together world-class resources and intellectual horsepower from every basic and clinical scientific discipline to urgently accelerate the timeline for developing therapies that are more precisely targeted, with aspirations to do so within the next five to seven years,” David H. Perlmutter, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs, said.
A part of the funds will also be invested to leverage the university’s cutting-edge research and biomedical capabilities, including state-of-the-art technologies such as CRISPR, and internationally known scientists in the areas of the microbiome, immunomodulatory therapies, cancer genomics, neurodegeneration, cellular reprogramming, chemical biology, informatics and others.
Innovations that come out of the research will be commercialized through the ARCH Personalized Medicine Initiative, a joint venture between the School of Medicine and Centene.
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